Transgender Day of Remembrance 2023: Up with Liberation

By Ian Ocx on November 20, 2023

^{Members of the American Party of Labor joined activists and organizers to Protect Trans Youth & Trans Lives, marching on City Hall in Orlando, FL, on Oct. 7, 2023. (Photo: Sebastian Lemba/ Red Phoenix)}

By Ian Ocx, LGBTQIA+ Commissioner of the American Party of Labor.

Today is Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day that all of us in the LGBTQIA+ community and its allies use to bring attention to the previous and ongoing struggles faced by our transgender and gender-nonconforming comrades.

Over the years, gender — and other subjects relating to it such as gender identity, gender expression, gender expectation, and one’s ability to move through various gender identities and roles or reject them altogether — have not only become subjects of discussion but have also become a legislative battleground in several regions across the US with reactionary lawmakers attempting to legislate, regulate, silence, and erase transgender and gender-nonconforming lives. In 2022 alone, the Human Rights Campaign recorded that “at least 41 transgender and gender-nonconforming people were fatally shot or killed by other violent means.” The attacks and damage to the lives of transgender and gender-nonconforming people do not stop here. So far in 2023, 85 anti-transgender laws have been passed across the US, and another 376 anti-transgender laws are still being debated in legislative sessions across the US as reported by Trans Legislation Tracker. Overall anti-LGBTQIA+ hate crimes “spiked 19%” in 2022 alone as reported by the FBI.

This upsurge in attacks on transgender and gender-nonconforming people, as well as the queer community as a whole, has not come out of nowhere or as the result of random chance. They are instead the result of the capitalist class trying to wage a culture war in order to keep the multinational and multicultural working class within the US divided on lines of identities, instead of united in their common class interests against capitalism and the exploitation it brings. However, this tactic of divisive identity politics on the part of the capitalist class is not working amongst the US population as a whole. A 2022 Pew Research study shows that “[r]oughly eight-in-ten U.S. adults say there is at least some discrimination against transgender people in our society, and a majority favor laws that would protect transgender individuals from discrimination in jobs, housing and public spaces.” This however does not negate that the US working class currently has vast differences of opinion on gender as a whole. It simply shows that the majority of the masses in the US do not see it fit to discriminate against a person based upon their gender identity and gender status.

Gender, as a social phenomenon and category, has always differed and changed within human society based on culture and historical epoch. While similarities exist, it is hard to find two that are alike in every way. To attempt to regulate the gender identity, gender expression, or gender dynamic of another person is to make the reactionary idealist conclusion that one conception of gender is superior to the other. Nothing in the vast history of human experience with the world and with ourselves leads to this conclusion.

Over the past year, the American Party of Labor has reconfirmed its commitment to ending the oppression and exploitation faced by all members of the queer community, especially its transgender and gender-nonconforming members who face nearly never-ending attacks from reactionary forces within the US. Not only has the APL issued a national call to defend transgender and gender-nonconforming people but we have actively engaged in organizing LGBTQIA+ comrades across the US in the struggle for liberation against the capitalist system that oppresses every member of the multinational and multicultural working class here in the US.

Today, on Transgender Day of Remembrance, we in the APL call for the liberation of all transgender and gender-nonconforming people from the reactionary oppression they face at the hands of the bourgeoisie and capitalist social relations. It is here that the APL also recognizes that no real meaningful liberation can be had within capitalism for transgender and gender-nonconforming workers who face discrimination at their jobs based on their gender identity. Only through the establishment of a socialist society can the root of all exploitation and oppression be eradicated.

Transgender Lives Matter!
Gender-Nonconforming Lives Matter!
Workers’ Lives Matter!
Up with Liberation!