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Title: The Gender Accelerationist Manifesto Author: Vikky Storm and Eme Flores Date: 4/24/2019 Language: en Topics: gender, gender abolition, gender theory, transgender, gender nihilism, gender communism, communism, intersectionality, queer, queer theory, queer nihilism
Death to gender! Freedom to the queers! But gender dies through eating
its own tail. Gender is dying already. Its death rattle is upon us, but
it still has time to save itself. It is on us to hurry it along to its
final end. To speed it on. To make it...
Accelerate.
Before we can discuss what is to be done, we need to know what is. And,
as always, the place to start when understanding a social system is it’s
material base. The material relations that produce the social system
provide us with the best grounding for understanding the social system
itself.
Material relations are relations of production. That is, they are the
way we relate to the various ways we labor and produce things. All of
society is based upon these relations of production and they produce all
of our social systems. Gender is no different.
So where does gender’s material base lie? Gender is produced primarily
by the division of reproductive labor. Reproductive labor is any labor
that helps to produce the next generation, including sex, birth,
childcare, and homemaking, and gender is defined by how this labor is
divided up, with the different genders being distinct classes which are
expected to perform specific sorts of tasks regarding reproductive
labor.
The way gender differs between cultures is determined by how these tasks
are divvied up between the genders. The particular characteristics that
this produces are what is known as the superstructure. So, while gender
is produced by this material base, it also involves an amalgamation of
various stereotypes, ways of dress, formal speech, etc in its
superstructure which differ how we experience our gender.
And this applies to all cultures. The Bugi people of Indonesia, rather
than the two genders of our society, have five genders in total. Calabai
and calalai people have biological characteristics that have been
gendered as male and female respectively, but they adopt the
reproductive labor tasks typically assigned to makkunrai (roughly
equivalent to women) and oroané (roughly equivalent to men) which
provides them with a different social class. More interestingly,
however, are the bissu, the fifth gender, which fills a role distinct
from the other four. They fill special ceremonial religious practices
and are said to be a mixture of the four other genders. Whereas
makkunrai and calabai take on typically feminine reproductive labor
tasks, such as homemaking, and oroané and calalai take on typically
masculine ones, such as providing support for their spouse, the bissu
transcend this and engage in their own tasks.
The Bugi gender system shows how malleable gender can be, but it also
provides us with an excellent example of the material base to gender.
The five genders of the Bugi are distinguished by how reproductive labor
is divided among the Bugi people. Everything else is produced by this
division.
Our culture is different from theirs but both are based upon the same
sorts of divisions of reproductive labor. What produces gender is how
these tasks are divvied up and all else follows from this.
This talk of material relations so often come down to naming
capitalistic relations as the base of things, but this does not hold
with gender. While gender and capitalism work together and are a part of
the same social order, they do not share the same material base. This
isn’t to say that the material base of gender has no relation to
capitalism; reproductive labor is required for producing new laborers
for capitalistic production and capitalistic production tends to define
the exact nature of male reproductive labor.
Since gender is an expression of these relations of production and not
of biology, where does that leave sex? Some pseudomarxists claim sex
forms the material base of gender, but this is a laughable understanding
of historical materialism which centers biology before relations of
production. Biology influences our reality, but our social systems find
their basis in our material conditions.
But sex is a thing and, if it isn’t the basis of gender, what is it?
Well, this formulation isn’t wrong, per se, it’s merely backwards.
Gender forms the basis of sex. We are not born with sex already within
us. We have penises, vaginas, breasts, beards, chromosomes, etc, but
these things are not sex on their own. They are features of our biology,
but we group them into sexes. When we call penises boy parts we are
creating and imposing gender upon the body.
What this means is that sex is the gendering of our biological features.
We assign gender to our biology and claim them to be innate. This is
used to present the gender class system as a natural thing that just
exists rather than a social system that gets imposed upon us. By
gendering our bodies, we act as if gender just is rather than it being
something that we’ve created. As such, sex serves to reinforce and
defend gender.
Because sex isn’t some inherent thing, but an element of gender’s
superstructure, it has changed over time. The earliest people could only
have gendered the features that are plainly visible, such as genitals.
It’s only as our understanding of anatomy progressed that we were able
to gender things like ovaries. Most recently, chromosomes have been
gendered because of their relationship to features we’ve already
gendered.
But chromosomes haven’t always been gendered. Half a century ago, no one
would look at someone with breasts and a vagina and gendered their
bodies male, even if their chromosomes read XY. However, in 1986, the
Spanish hurdler Maria JosĂ© MartĂnez-Patiño failed a chromosome test in
the 1986 Olympics which led people to reject her as male sexed. Three
years prior, she had passed a sex verification saying she was a female
sexed based on older methods, but, because she is XY, she failed a
chromosome test. In previous epochs, no one would have questioned her
body’s womanhood, but, thanks to the gendering of chromosomes, her body
was deemed male and she was shunned and shamed.
Gender is the earliest class systems and, as a result, it precedes the
state, even in its earliest most basic form. This means that, unlike
capitalism, race, neuronormativity, and the various other class systems,
the state is not the primary means by which gender is imposed upon
people. This isn’t to say that the state doesn’t impose gender, but it
is supplementary, not primary. By the time states were cropping up,
gender had already solidified itself and become quite adept at imposing
itself upon others.
So, if not the state, how is it imposed? Through sexual violence. When
we look to statistics on the issues, what we find is that rates of
sexual violence are higher among women than among men and among queer
people than among straight men. Some forms of sexual violence are higher
among straight women than queer women and some forms of sexual violence
are higher among queer women than straight women. Trans people face
higher rates of sexual violence than cis people of the same gender as
them. This is saddening on its own and the real cost of it upon the
lives of those affected should not be ignored. This is a horrifying
state of affairs and this should not be diminished in any way.
These higher rates of sexual violence are primarily against lower
classes within the gender system. Straight, cis men are placed above
women and queer people and straight cis men are less likely to
experience sexual violence than women or queer people, while women tend
to have rates more similar to queer people. This shows that sexual
violence is used primarily against those relegated to the lower class
and those who are divergent from enforced gender norms.
Sexual violence fills the role among women and queer people that police
violence fills among many others. Indeed, while police violence does
exist, it is quite frequently sexually charged when applied to women and
queer people. Among queer people specifically, sexual violence is often
done with explicitly correctional purposes. That is, sexual violence,
particularly rape, is often used against queer people specifically to
make them straight and cis. This is when the role of sexual violence is
most explicit, but it is always for this purpose. Even when sexual
violence isn’t done for this explicit purpose, it always serves the
purpose of enforcing the dominant gender system upon the victim.
When it comes to sex workers, this can be especially pronounced. As sex
workers are performing work that’s illegal almost everywhere in the
world, they are unable to properly report sexual violence against them
to the police and, when they do, they are often jailed for engaging in
sex work. This means that sexual violence done against them can be done
unhampered by interference from the state in ways it is not possible
among other groups. In addition, we find sex workers are more likely to
be women or queer than straight cishet men. This is not by mistake, but
a specific venue for sexual violence against women and queer people
where it can be done with impunity.
There aren’t any current genderless societies. Though there are many
variations, all have created a division of reproductive labor which has
produced a gender system. Indeed, they’ve been around since at least the
first civilizations developed the first writing systems. Gender is the
first system of power developed by society.
But these are systems, not a system, and the modern gender binary has
been enforced on almost the whole world. Some different gender class
systems still exist, but, by and large, the advent of the liberal social
order as a global social order rather than a regional one has produced a
single gender system which all other systems are seen as perversions of.
Other gender systems today serve as hold outs within a larger global
system.
The modern system is a European one, but it’s one that developed during
and through colonialism. As Europeans expanded their power around the
globe, they came into contact with various other gender systems and,
rather than seeing difference, they saw a problem. They responded to it
by enforcing their own gender system upon the various peoples their
invaded and colonized. But enforcing a gender system upon other groups
like that necessarily transforms it.
When a system like this is imposed upon another culture, it will lose
some characteristics and gain others, purely from the process of
enforcement. Because the imperialists can’t allow for the old system to
persevere, they need to make their own system less flexible so that it
can’t account for the old system, forcing people to find a place in the
new. Religion also added new significance to it. While gender always had
religious significance, the enforcement of the single gender system was
done in service of and by religious institutions to a greater extent
than it had before. Christian missionaries would force the European
colonial gender system wherever they went and they tied it closely to
Christian religious morality. This contributed to the lack of
flexibility because it infused gender with religious zeal that had
previously not played as large of a part.
And this enforcement came at the expense of the people it was enforced
upon. Whereas previously, many first nations peoples had third genders
which were accepted within their societies and often held honored
positions, people who today still identify with those third genders are
oppressed and marginalized. This enforcement also served to destroy
culture. Cultural practices tied to older gender systems were no longer
able to be practiced and European cultural practices got enforced upon
them. European, Christian marriages were spread across the globe
alongside the gender system and would transform local marriage practices
along the way.
It was also transformed by the rise of capitalism. The pre-colonial
gender system was tied strongly to the economic systems dominant in
Europe prior to the rise of capitalism. Marriage served as a means of
securing alliances among the upper classes and as a means of stability
among the lower classes. Gender was defined by the intrigues of court or
the necessities of toil in the fields or in the cities. But, with
capitalism, we find it more and more tied to wage labor and marriage
transformed with it. The male part of reproductive labor was
increasingly to labor for a capitalistic boss and the female part to
support his wage labor from home. This effect on the material base of
gender caused it to transform, both in how the classes worked and in the
characteristics of the superstructure.
This new system has a few characteristics which define it. Not all of
them developed at once, but they’ve been imposed upon the whole world.
They are as follows:
and woman. Other genders are seen as perversion and are shunned and
marginalized.
birth. While every gender system ties gender to biology, the modern
system equates the two. Being a man in this system isn’t tied to having
a penis, it is having a penis. And this gender is immutable. You can’t
change it. If you’re born as a man, you’re seen as a man no matter what.
There are no options or alternatives.
women are supposed to sign an agreement to be faithful and to stay
together and violation of that is seen as a breach of contract and
therefore bad.
choice done for necessity. Gone are marriages for alliances or arranged
marriages, for the most part. Marriage is only a choice for the two who
are getting married.
and the woman is expected to clean up the home, take care of the
children, cook, and shop.
Not all of these characteristics are unique to the modern system and
some of them are improvements on old systems, but they are imposed upon
everyone which destroys individual culture and choice.
As has been referenced previously, gender is a system of class, and is
one defined by the domination of manhood over society. This is why
another name for the gender class system is patriarchy. Gender as a
social system is patriarchy and patriarchy is the social class system of
gender. Within this class system, we find three distinct classes, two
accepted and one subversive.
First, we have men. When dividing reproductive labor, men are the ones
who are tasked with controlling reproductive labor and the fruits of
that labor and with engaging in economic labor to support those who
perform primarily reproductive labor. The exception to this is sexual
relations where they engage with them directly, but they’re expected to
be dominant and in control. This serves as the material base for
maleness. The superstructure is more expansive. We find men are assigned
with taking action, with increasing strength, and with constant
competitiveness. Given their control of reproductive labor and
domination over women, this is the ruling class within patriarchy.
Women, on the other hand, are the ruled. They are tasked with performing
most reproductive action, with housekeeping, food preparation for the
family, child rearing, and other such tasks. They’re also expected to
engage in sexual relations, but have the relations controlled by the
man. They have their labor controlled and confined by men and have the
fruits of that labor commanded by men. This is reflected in the
superstructure around them. They’re expected to be subservient and
passive, to accept that which comes for them, etc.
This class dynamic of man over woman is the principal dynamic of
patriarchy, but they do not comprise the only two classes. Instead, we
find that some people relate to reproductive labor differently than how
it’s imposed upon the population. This is especially the case with
regards to sex, when someone engages in sexual relations that do not fit
with the dynamics imposed by patriarchy. This includes people who are
sexually attracted to people of the same gender (gay/lesbian people), of
multiple genders (bisexual/pansexual people), or no gender (asexual
people). In addition, people whose gender is different from the one
patriarchy assigns to them can’t be classed as neatly as people who
accept the assignment by gender. While they might be personally men or
women, they aren’t treated by society in quite the same way so they
comprise a distinct social class. Characteristic to this is the
detachment of sex and romance from reproducing the next generation.
While it’s still possible for all of these groups to reproduce the next
generation, it is no longer a necessary part of sex and romance.
Since this third class is defined by it’s difference from those of the
first two classes, it is named queer. Queer people are all those who
relate differently to the division of reproductive labor assigned to
them by patriarchy. Because of the different relations, queer people are
inherently subversive to the class system as a whole and constitute the
revolutionary class under patriarchy.
This queerness is a particular characteristic of the modern gender
system. Other gender systems do not have the same class system and,
thus, have different categories for people. Indeed, in places where
older gender systems have been maintained, it isn’t accurate to default
to talking about queerness. Many people who identify with genders from
older gender systems are queer by virtue of the modern gender system
being imposed upon them, but many of them aren’t because of the
complexities of being in communities with those genders.
Class, class, class. We are dominated and controlled. Sorted and
divided. But where do we factor into all this? People see class like
this as merely imposed, but that fails to account for the ways we
actually interact with it. It isn’t simply imposed upon us. We are
active participants within it, we perform it.
Here we can listen to the analysis of Judith Butler: Performative acts,
that is all the little actions you take which construct an identity, are
key to understanding how gender functions on an individual level. We
find these in the most basic things we do and say, “I am a woman”, “No,
I can’t play with that. It’s a boy toy”, “Boys will be boys”. These acts
produce an identity, both within ourselves and within others. You
identify as a woman or a man and identify others as men or women by
engaging in these acts.
This is hardly done freely. The violence of the system is inherent and
systemic. We perform these acts surrounded by the violence of gender.
But we still perform them. Gender isn’t content with forcing itself upon
us. Instead, it forces us to say “yes” to it.
This serves as a method of control and reproduction. Gender isn’t
inherent, but it spreads by assigning us to a class and forcing us to
say yes to that class. “Yes, I am a man. It is who I am and who I always
have been. I cannot escape it or deny it. I am a man.” This is nothing
but a lie we are forced to repeat. But by repeating it enough, we come
to believe it. Gender becomes natural, inescapable, eternal. It ceases
to be an imposed identity and becomes an eternal part of who we are. By
objecting to my gender, you are objecting to that which is inherently
me.
Here lies one of gender’s greatest defense mechanisms: Ourselves. We
insist upon it and reject those who turn away from it. It becomes an
unholy act for those who turn from the path. Indeed, it seems to us as
if there’s no other option. We say yes because that’s all we can say. It
is made inconceivable that it could be any other way.
But now we must speak of communism to understand how gender relates to
the rest of society. For that, we must know what communism is.
“We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state
of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now
in existence.”
Karl Marx, The German Ideology
Communism conceived in this way is a movement against the present social
order, one seeking the liberation of those oppressed. This should not be
seen as an ideal we strive for, but a real, active movement that exists
in the present day. We don’t find communism in plans for the future,
but, rather, in a worker sabotaging his workplace, a wife who escapes
from her abusive husband with her children, Naxalites engaging in
guerrilla warfare against the Indian government, rioters rejecting the
police to loot and burn their cities, etc.
Within the communist movement we find all the important work being done
in the present day. The communist movement isn’t about some far off
ideal, but the immediate communism it produces. It’s an active revolt
against the present state of things which is communizing society
immediately, not some theorists in a university considering the world
from his armchair. It simply states the present state of things must go,
and then takes action to make it so.
But this state of things should not and cannot be conceived of as only
one system of class or one element of the society we live in. The
present state of things is not capitalism or gender or race or the
state. Rather, it is the totality of liberal society, and every system
contained therein. As such, the communist movement finds itself in stark
contrast with liberalism and gives us a counterpoint to the failed
analysis and politics of liberalism.
Liberal analyses reduce oppression to a number of separate, but
intersecting, systems of oppression. This renders the fights against
them as separate, but allied. There’s an anti-racist movement, a
feminist movement, an economic justice movement, etc, but these are only
allies, not the same movement. This forms the liberal conception of
intersectionality. This liberal version of intersectionality presents
systems that can be domineering (among the oppressed) or passive (among
the privileged), thus a white gay man only ever truly experiences
anti-queer oppression and all other systems are silent to him.
In truth, oppressive systems are more than that. There is no one
untouched by the domination of class systems within liberal society.
Everyone, from the most powerful capitalist to the lowliest worker, from
the domineering patriarch to the uncertain young trans woman, from the
controlling asylum administrator to the schizophrenic force-fed
medication, from the white gentrifier to a black family pushed out of
their family apartment all experience the control of these systems. No
one is left untouched. Rather than being systems of passive control,
they are an active totalitarian whole, a totality.
This totality encompasses every part of society, dominates every member
of society, and alienates everyone and everything contained within. It
is inescapable and domineering. Totality is where communist analysis,
rather than liberal analysis, must lead us.
We find similar problems in liberal conceptions of identity politics
which see oppression as done to specific identities over classes. This
renders the identity as the base rather than the superstructure. What
this means is that the liberal conception of liberation is respecting
your identity and treating your identity fairly. But, even if we do
this, our identities would still oppress us because it fails to address
the underlying conditions that cause them. To them, stripping away the
domination of the specific system of oppression we experience renders us
free from it, becoming equal with those with privileges. But this leaves
the totality untouched.
Liberal politics is ultimately one of reformism, not revolution or
abolition. Communist politics provides us with a path forward through
abolitionism, not reformism. Gender can’t be reformed to free us, it
must be abolished.
When discussing material bases and superstructures, it’s important to
acknowledge existing analyses of these systems. The more traditional
analysis of these systems view the base purely in terms of capitalistic
relations of production. The base, in this view, is purely the
capitalist ownership of the means of production. This basal relation
then goes on to enforce other systems of oppression within the broader
liberal social order. Gender is not basal, but an aspect of the
superstructure produced by capitalistic relations of production. But
this view ignores the basal aspects of other systems of oppression.
Gender is not merely an identity. It is fundamentally a relationship of
production producing a system of class. Nor are gender and capitalism
alone in being basal. We find basal aspects to neuronormativity, white
supremacy, the state, etc.
However, it would be a mistake to interpret these other systems being
basal to imply they’re separate. If we do so, we run into the same
problems liberal analyses of intersectionality create. When capitalistic
production goes on, it relies upon the reproductive labor imposed upon
women at home. The value produced in the workplace would be impossible
without new generations of workers being reproduced and without support
for the workers through reproductive labor of their partners and that
they do themselves. In this way, reproductive labor is unpaid labor done
for the capitalist class as much as it is an independent system of class
to capitalism.
We also find similarities in the enforcement of cisheteronormative
systems and the enforcement of disability. Both disabled people, both in
the form of physical disability and neurodivergence, are socially
defined in terms of the ability to engage in normal laboring. When
someone is unable to labor for a boss in ways other workers are able to,
that is made into a disability. And queerness is a reflection of this
within relations of production. Queerness is a lack of engagement with
the enforced labor of gender, afterall. It is no mistake that queerness
so frequently gets conceived of in terms of mental illness. They are
materially reflections of each other in different parts of the base.
And this discussion cannot ignore the relations of production inherent
to the state. Ultimately, the state is labor. It is as much engaging in
labor to break up a strike as it is to turn cloth into a coat. But this
labor is not the same. Cops are not workers. Unlike a worker, a cop
breaking up a strike is not producing value for the capitalist class.
Instead, cops are enforcing the structures of labor production themself.
This is, in itself, a vastly different relationship of production than
that of workers. They are not unrelated, but the labor of the state is
the labor which serves to enforce the relations of production which
produce class systems. Unlike what many theories of the state would say,
this is not superstructural. This is basal.
Of course, other systems of oppression have basal elements as well which
connect in similar ways. A full overview of all the ways all the systems
of oppression interact is outside of the scope of this writing, but
cannot be forgotten.
These relations of production are not separate. They might be
functioning in different ways, but they form a singular basal system.
Oppression is not a variety of interacting systems, but a singular
totalizing base, a totality. This totalizing base creates the space for
a communist conception of intersectionality which abandons the mistakes
of the liberal analysis without abandoning the inherent connection
between different forms of oppression.
The totalizing nature of the base means you can’t change aspects of the
base without addressing the base as a whole. Indeed, we find that as we
moved from previous social orders to the present liberal social order,
gender transformed to match the new sort of society that was produced.
This was because reproductive labor is intertwined with all other
material relations. Changing the relations of production for economic
activity necessarily changes the division of reproductive labor. The
base functions organically as a singular system. There is one base, one
system. This is what it means for a society to be a totality.
At its most basic, gender accelerationism is using gender’s own process
of decay to destroy the gender class system. It’s class abolitionism
applied to gender, the revolutionary overhaul of society to do away with
gender itself. This cannot be done separate of the abolition of the
whole of present society. Totality demands we view it as the same system
as other systems of oppression.
As such, we cannot engage in gender abolition without abolishing all
forms of class. To do away with gender, so to must go capitalism, race,
neuronormativity, and the state. These things are one system. They form
a single liberal social order which cannot be allowed to continue. Our
object is not just an end to one part, but an end to class society
itself.
This is the process of the communist movement. As such, gender
accelerationism is gender communism, and since gender acceleration is
the path to abolishing gender, gender communism is gender
accelerationism.
Many people fear that, through the abolition of gender, our own gender
identities will be taken from us. That, in abolishing gender, we will
force you to stop identifying with your gender, however much you might
enjoy that identity.
In many cases like this, it’s elucidative to make an analogy. For this,
let’s talk about bakers. When someone engages with the capitalist system
by baking, they tend to form an identity around this baking. That is,
having a career in which you bake creates the identity of baker.
Similarly, when you engage with reproductive labor in particular ways,
you create particular gender identities, both in the ways you conform
with the gender that has been given to you and in the ways in which you
reject the gender that has be given to you. In both cases, an element of
the base is creating within you an identity. Which is to say, your
identity stemming from your social position is superstructural.
So will we force people to stop identifying with being a baker or being
a woman? The short answer is, “No, we’re concerned with changing the
base and allowing the superstructure to land where it may,” but a more
extensive examination is in order.
What happens to my identity as a baker once the capitalist system of
careers which produced that identity is abolished? This is much more
interesting of a question, anyway. Without the enforcement of labor
characterized by capitalism, no longer is someone who bakes bread forced
into staying within that career. This abandonment of the basal causes of
the identity leaves the identity unfixed. The identity may persist, for
example if you really love to bake bread, you may continue to identify
with being a baker, but there’s no underlying logic to the identity nor
does it come out of or reinforce structures of power like identifying as
a baker today. But, unlike today, you can engage with baking without it
becoming something fixed to you, without becoming a baker.
Over time, the identity of being a baker will likely fade, tho there are
many social factors which could allow it to persist, but it would lose
its social and political significance. There is no need to enforce the
abandonment of the identity of baker to do away with the career system
which has produced it.
In this way, there is no need or desire to force people to stop
identifying with their gender. The end of gender as a system of power is
our goal, and the end to gender identities is an eventual result, if it
will happen at all, not something of importance or which we should
strive toward.
Tied up with all parts of the present state of things is the necessity
for continual growth. States and white supremacy push forever outward,
and often inward, through imperialistic and colonial expansion.
Capitalism seeks the infinite expansion of capital. And gender? The
ultimate purpose it serves is the continuous expansion of people. The
reproductive labor its based around all serves unending population
growth.
This unsustainable growth is characteristic of the present state of
things and connects all the systems of oppression within it. Communism
of all sorts must ultimately challenge this need to grow and expand.
Socialism destroys the need for economic growth, anarchy the need for
state growth, queerness ultimately decouples love and reproduction. No
longer are we all constrained to roles which force us to reproduce
continuously and, instead, we can live free to choose whether we want to
or not.
By destroying the need for growth and ending endless reproduction,
queerness and communism in general abolishes the future as we know it.
Here we find the most radical end to queerness. Through queerness we
free ourselves from the need to grow and, in turn, say “no” to the
future. And, with that radical “no”, we can imagine it could be another
way.
“No.” Not everyone says yes to gender. “I reject it.” These people have
chosen a different path, a different life. “I am not.” This forms a
different identity.
When you get assigned the male class, but you loudly assert the
opposite, you have said “no” to gender. Gender gave you what you are,
but you turned away in disgust. You are not a man, you are something
else. Some find comfort in womanhood, others in something entirely
outside, but whichever path you take, you have said no to gender.
Similarly, when you get assigned the female class, but, again, you
loudly assert the opposite, you have said “no” to gender. Your embrace
of manhood or something beyond constitutes a rejection, a turning away,
from gender.
When you sit apart from your assignment, you are transgender.
The modern gender system is weak. It has spelled its own doom by how it
has formed itself. When the modern gender system spread itself, it gave
up flexibility to destroy competing systems and imposed itself upon all
cultures. But this leaves it unable to account for many people. Many
have great difficulty with the gender assigned to them and, because they
are given no alternatives and their gender is seen as immutable, they
end up subversive to the system itself.
People whose gender doesn’t match with the gendering of their biological
features aren’t exactly new. Many previous systems had explicit classes
for people like this, such as the Bugi gender system. These are
multigendered systems and they have a space for those who aren’t willing
to accept the gender assigned to their biology.
But trans people don’t relate to the gender system in this way. Whereas
the people with different genders and sexes in multigendered systems are
accepting the gender within their class system, trans gender are
rejecting it. The modern gender system has no place for trans people, so
we’re subversive to it. As such, trans people are not transhistorical,
but a historically contingent feature of the post-colonial gender system
which has been imposed upon the world. Nor are trans people necessarily
a feature everywhere in the world. Within gender systems which allow for
gender variations, it’s often inaccurate to call people acting within
the context of their gender system trans because of how the system they
live under functions. These gender systems were less repressive because
of their flexibility, but they’re more robust. Because of their
robustness, combating them would require different strategies particular
to that particular system.
Unable to, or unwilling to, accept our place within the gender class
system, trans people are dissent against it, and gender as it exists
today cannot account for us. Other gender systems have been more
flexible, more able to account for everyone within them. Multigender
systems give options for people unable to work with the gender
associated with their biology. This means that people can fit within the
system easier and gives the system strength. Our system does not do
this, and this is a crack within the system. It provides us with reason
to say “no”.
As discussed earlier, performativity requires you to actively accept the
class you’re assigned to by gender. This is a strength of gender because
it forces you to be complicit in your own oppression, but it’s also a
weakness. Since your class is based, in part, on your active acceptance
of it, this creates the path to active rejection. Indeed, if enough
people reject the gender assigned to them, gender cannot function.
And trans people are those rejecting their gender, saying “no” to
gender. This is a modern phenomenon which is subversive toward gender
and presents us with a path forward. Here we find the core to the
revolutionary potential of queer people. If everyone says “no” to
gender, everyone ceases to accept it, then gender is lost. We find
similar strategies among resistance to other class systems. People fight
capitalism through a refusal to work, a general strike against it.
Similarly, a collective “no” to gender rejects the class system and
allows us to take it to its knees.
This would be nothing but a revolution. It’s an overhaul of society
which allows for queer people to take its reigns and remake it in our
image. This act of class abolition by queer people, including a
self-abolition of our own class, is a daring attack upon gender. It
takes over society to transform it and eliminate class from it. This
means that such a revolution would be the dictatorship of the queer.
Far too often people do not seek the liberation of queer people, only
our assimilation. Gay assimilation is the mainstream LGBT rights
movement, but it does not go far enough. If all we do is assimilate, we
are still subject to the power and domination of the gender class
system. We aren’t free, just folded into the existing system of
oppression and domination.
And it’s dangerous, too. Assimilation provides gender with the chance to
escape its final end. If gender can assimilate gayness, lesbianism,
bisexuality, transgender people, and all other modes of queerness, it
will become flexible and accommodate for the forces driving it towards
its end. If we assimilate, gender might never end.
But liberation cannot be found within the context of existing systems of
power. If we simply turn to the state, to capitalist businesses, to
patriarchal marriage, and call for us to be included, we will never be
free. Doing so only perpetuates state power, capitalist power, and male
power. But we must create queer power.
Nor can that liberation come through imposing identities upon people.
There is no benefit to our liberation and the abolition of the gender
system to prevent someone who’s identity is rooted in a different gender
system or who finds joy in their queer identity from identifying in that
way. As has been discussed previously, it is the base we are concerned
with, not the identities in the superstructure.
Queer power is separate from the existing institutions. We declare our
difference, unashamed and proud. We don’t join their projects. We don’t
participate in their systems. We don’t increase their power. In its
place, we must make our own!
This means creating queer organizations and institutions. Counterpowers
to the dominant patriarchal class system. These allow for us to provide
people with what they need for transition, including providing HRT
drugs, supporting victims of sexual assault, empowering women outside of
the system, and ultimately providing spaces to be different, to escape
the domination of gender.
It’s important that these institutions don’t recreate the sexual
violence that enforces gender. This is difficult, but necessary. We
cannot allow sexual abusers or sexual assault to creep its way into our
spaces. Queer power means safety from sexual assault and abuse. These
things empower and enforce patriarchy, so we have no place for them.
Patriarchal behavior is an act of violence. Violence is what it
practices. We cannot oppose that through passivity and non-violence.
Queer power needs violence to destroy gender. A sustained terror against
those who seek to enforce gender and prevent gender’s death, a pink
terror, is a necessity in the revolution against gender.
We find no allies in the state or the capitalist class. The cops and
corporations are our enemies, not our allies. Indeed, Pride finds its
roots in riots against the police. We have only ourselves to rely upon
for our own liberation, not the institutions of violence that already
exist. We must destroy gender on our own terms, not on theirs.
This means that the queer organizations and institutions we build for
queer power must be militant, armed organizations. It’s not enough to
provide a space outside of patriarchy, we must arm ourselves to defend
those spaces and to render an assault upon the overarching structures of
power that seek to enforce gender upon us. This means that our queer
organizations must be, or include, queer militias to fight against the
structures of power.
These queer militias provide us with a framework to fight against sexual
assault, too. Queer militias can provide protection and justice where
the state will not to women and queer people. This is especially true of
those most vulnerable. Sex workers often cannot turn to the police to
report sexual assault against them. Their work is illegal, so they risk
punishment for the sex they were having, even if it was rape. Indeed,
often the sexual assault they experience comes from the police
themselves. Queer militias provide them with a way to deal with sexual
assault.
This can also provide queer people with a framework for fighting against
misgendering and deadnaming. When people continuously and knowingly use
the wrong pronouns and names for others, it is a form of violence
against them. Doing so frequently leads to self-harm and sometimes
suicide by queer people. As such, we need to defend and back other queer
people up. Such violence against queer people cannot go unanswered and
cannot be acceptable. But we should keep proportional responses in mind.
Misgendering doesn’t warrant murder.
Gender won’t go down without a fight; a counter-revolution will appear
to tear us down. Against the gender accelerationist movement, movements
will develop to defend, or even regress, gender. Historically,
revolutionary movements often find themselves followed by fascist
movements rejecting the call for the new world and seeking a
rejuvenation of the present one through rebirth. These fascist movements
embrace hypermasculinity and seek to exacerbate the domination of
masculinity over society.
Here we find our clearest enemy, and the new fascist movements of the
present will react to our accelerationism with reaction and
counter-revolution. Here the queer militias will be needed to defend the
revolution against advancing reaction. Conflict will inevitably get
bloody and we’ll fight in the streets as needed to shut down the
counter-revolution and ensure our victory.
These new movements won’t be our only opponents. The forces of
liberalism defending the present state of things will see us as a threat
as much as the advancing fascists will, and their opposition will be
just as brutal. Cops will oppose us in force, and we’ll need force to
defend our gains, protect the revolution, and advance our victory.
We cannot stop part way or allow for our defeat. Gender means the
domination of all and sustained violence against women and queer people.
We cannot allow for our defeat and our eyes must be upon victory. This
isn’t merely a choice, it’s a necessity.