• dohpaz42@lemmy.worldEnglish
    8·
    24 days ago

    I’d really love for someone smarter than me (low bar, I know) to explain to me how transsexualism is bourgeois?

    I’m not being rhetorical.

    • squirrel@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      21·
      24 days ago

      Because it is not a coherent political standpoint, the justifications are all over the place. Ultimately people are being bigots and they come up with slew of explanations to justify their bigotry. So the arguments vary…

      One of most popular argument goes something like this “Only rich capitalists engaged in homosexuality and transsexualism because of degenerate bourgeois ennui. True Workers™ are never homosexual and transsexual. Therefore any homosexual and transsexual must be a member of the bourgeois class and cannot be a True Worker™.” (Which is just circular logic.)

      There are other arguments in the vein of “China (or another socialist country of choice) is queerphobic, China is socialist, therefore socialism must be queerphobic.” (Which fails to acknowledge that other socialist countries like for example the GDR were remarkably progressive in comparison to its capitalist neighbors.)

      Then there are other circular arguments like “Capitalist societies are rotten to the core. There is more queer visibility today. Queerness is proof of capitalist rot.”

      Appeals to queerphobia of the past like “The Soviet Union criminalized queerness. The Soviet Union is the socialist ideal, therefore we should do like them.”

      Or there are appeals to the authority of some queerphobic socialist writer of the past. As well as riffs on the argument from the screenshot which boil down to “Individualism is bourgeois capitalism. Queerness is an individual choice. It cannot be allowed under socialism where collectivism reigns supreme.”

      • Druid@lemmy.zipOPEnglish
        11·
        23 days ago

        Thank you for that detailed breakdown - appreciate it. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered someone claiming that queerness is bourgeois, actually. Is that a common claim?

        • SpookyBogMonster@lemmy.mlEnglish
          5·
          23 days ago

          I don’t think I’ve ever encountered someone claiming that queerness is bourgeois, actually. Is that a common claim?

          This actually goes back to the USSR in the 30s, where, after a repeal of Tsarist law in the country led to a ~Decade long sexual revolutio.

          But Stalin’s rise to power, and subsequent anxieties related to geopolitical isolation and the buildup to WW2, led to a socially reactionary turn, and homosexuality was criminalized.

          The reason given by some was that Homosexuality was bourgeoisie decadence.

          This is, of course, silly. But that’s a line that persists among some ML parties. For example, in the UK, most ML orgs still hold to this line of thinking. While your pro-lgbt socialist orgs lean heavily Trotskyist.

        • squirrel@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          2·
          23 days ago

          To add to what SpookyBogMonster already said: On an international stage the big proponents of these views nowadays are Xi Jiping’s faction in China or North Korea, while even Cuba (which had upheld these views for a long time) have now abandoned this position.

          In the US and in Europe, it’s a fringe position among leftists, mostly popular with those who also hold favourable views of Xi Jiping’s China and North Korea. It’s a very vocal minority though and infamously one of the key developers of the Lemmy platform is one of those.

    • Drewfro66@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
      1·
      23 days ago

      I want to preface my comment with saying that I’m a political activist who has been part of the local movement for Transgender rights for years, I have many transgender friends, I consider myself non-binary, and have dated both trans men and women. I’m not a transphobe.

      Within Marxist, especially Marxist-Leninist, philosophy and political thought, there is a division made between Communitarianism/Collectivism and Individualism. With Collectivism being considered proletarian in nature and Individualism being a Bourgeoise abomination.

      Much of our modern philosophy around gender is steeped in Bourgeoise, individualist ideas, because North America and Western Europe are dominated by Capitalism and, with it, Bourgeois Individualism.

      Concepts within gender science such as Self-Identification and a desire to “buck norms”, the idea that people have a right to express themselves however they want without consideration for their larger communities, would be considered Bourgeoise and individualist. Some Individualism is fine and even necessary within a Communitarian society, but not when taken to an extreme.

      I believe a Socialist society should advance Collectivist ideas of transgender acceptance. If the majority of a community accepts a member’s transgender identity but there is a vocal transphobic minority, it is they who are acting Individualistically and should be persecuted. Gender presentation should not be based in mutual ostentatiousness but in mutual modesty; women wearing pants, not men wearing eyeliner. Vanity is individualistic and Bourgeoise.

      The power of the State should be used to advance Transgender rights, including free healthcare for gender transition and education on transgender issues in public schools. Public schools and state media are the primary means by which a Collectivist society can alter public consciousness and both should be used to advance the idea that some people have a medical requirement for gender transition.