The Trump-administration in the White House has started to look at the possibility to restrict the rights of transgender people by narrowing the definition of gender to male and female only, and make it so that these categories are solely based on biological factors at birth. This is just another attack at the LGBT+ community that the fascistic government has attempted. They have among other things also removed questions about gender identity from the 2020 Census and tried to prohibit transgender people from working in certain fields.
This reveals several things. Firstly, it shows how precarious a situation transgender people and other members of the LGBT+ community find themselves in at the moment, and how important it is for all of us to support each other 100%. Unfortunately this reactionary agenda also finds some sympathies in otherwise ”progressive” or anti-capitalist circles, with everything from open attacks on transgender people by so-called TERFs, to those who, in a more subtle manner, enable transphobic sentiments by questioning transgender people’s right and possibilities to themselves define their identity, and in the process making it sound as if transgender people are a threat to cis-women. But transphobia is not feminism!
Secondly, this also goes to show how fragile ”rights” are when they are primarily viewed as a piece of paper signed off by a government. The LGBT+ rights that are expanded one day (by Obama) can be curtailed the next. For that reason, we can’t trust governments, laws or declarations of rights in order for us all to be able to live safe lives and enjoy well being. Instead, these are things we have to fight for together, in all our social spheres and communities. Only the rights that a people makes into its habit through active struggle in their everyday lives, rights that are realized through that struggle and in those lives, are real rights.
So let us keep on struggling, no one is free until we’re all free, and an injury to one is an injury to all!
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