Essay:Welcome to TERF Island

Note: This essay is being produced during the middle situation of the Cass Review in TERF Island. As the author editing this essay, I am ashamed of how low trans healthcare has gone, to the point where trans people are being affected and harmed in this country. Let it be known that I extend all my solidarity to all trans people as I am trans myself, so that this country can be rid of all transphobia.

Disclaimer: This essay contains transphobia and quotes from transphobic authors. If you are sensitive to this, please take caution while reading this essay.

Introduction

The title of the essay in question only gives more questions for those not too involved in transgender groups or spaces, specifically the term "TERF Island" . This is an alternate name for the United Kingdom, but with the added negative connotation to this new title. Why is this the case? This is due to being the United Kingdom being a place filled with "TERFs".

What is a TERF?

In short, TERF is an acronym which stands for "Transgender Exclusionary Radical Feminist". It is a form of Radical Feminism which excretes its most reactionary form. It removes all aspects of a real Feminist struggle (that being the dismantlement of capitalism, the patriarchy, and objectification) that which the LGBT people also benefit from, and instead offer an alternative which asserts that sex and gender are the same, and ultimately determines the sex/gender by genitalia or sex chromosomes. We will not be debunking TERFs per se as I have already made an essay analysing the LGBT question from a marxist perspective, rather I would want to set a foothold for those people who are unaware of what a TERF is.

This essay will attempt to cover all basis of the transphobia of the United Kingdom (or so joyfully I will call "TERF Island") specifically all the transphobia lying in the National Health Service (NHS), the British Parliament, organisations not often talked about, such as the transphobia of the communist parties in the United Kingdom, and lastly, certain people or peoples who had involvement with the public conscious of the British people.

Transphobia surrounding Britain

Transgender groups did not begin entering the public sphere until around the 2000s, and even then it wasn't considered very popular as the fear of 'homosexuality' and 'crossdressing' was still within the public sphere. Nonetheless, transgender oppression exists, and it was upmost essential for transgender people to 'pass', to fit within the gender binary, and non-binary people did not had any real means to fit inside the gender binary unless by suppressing their gender. There was some improvements, such as the development of the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) by the Tavistock clinic in 1989, but transphobia was still in the surface, and the transgender people were oppressed heavily if they did not engage in stealth.

However there were big improvements within the transgender people. In this case, the 2004 Gender Recognition Act passed by the British government (under Labour), which allowed people to legally change their sex with the addition of a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC). There are problems with this idea of a GRC, but we will get onto this later. It seems the labour aristocracy has privileged the LGBT people in the first world. However this will soon to be learned, short-lived. I will not be going over the increasing rights of the transgender people, as this is not about privilege of the transgender people over transgender people in third world, but rather the contradictions of capitalism that soon arise that has soon put transgender people (and consequently the LGBT people) under oppression.

The Transphobia within the British Parliament

The British Parliament as of now does not support the rights of Transgender people as of today. Both Labour under Keir Starmer and the Conservatives (informally known as the Tories) under Rishi Sunak both oppose the rights of transgender people. Here is a quote by Rishi Sunak, who defends his transphobia under the guise of 'Common Sense':

[W]e shouldn’t get bullied into believing that people can be any sex they want to be. They can’t. A man is a man and a woman is a woman — that’s just common sense.”

And this general line is in line with every party member in the Conservative party. The Conservative Party, despite having an LGBT wing is clearly transphobic.

The Labour party is no different. Keir Starmer is nothing more than a contrarian, and as typical of Identity politics, he chooses a side which only proves him against his rival, which is as of this making this essay, Rishi Sunak. Around 2 years ago, Keir Starmer took part in an Mumsnet interview which Keir Starmer had the delightful idea to oppose transgender youth being able to decide their own gender:

We all know what it’s like with teenage children. I feel very strongly about this. This argument [that] children [can] make decisions without the parents is one I just don’t agree with at all.

The quote alteration was not made by the essay author.

It is clear that the two dominant parties which rule the British parliament do not disagree with each other on the stance of transgender rights. Transgender rights are not safe in TERF Island, and they will not be until there is some solution that could be done to combat this. In this case it would be socialism. It is clear that the overall British parliament does not support trans rights.

Even if it is the case that the Liberal Democrats, the Greens, or any other party in the pseudo-multi party system would support transgender rights, they are not powerful enough to stop this duopoly system. There are a few "critiques" that can be made from this analysis which I will get onto, and it must be addressed first before we continue on.

What about "Tactical Voting"?

The British Government has the so-called "British Values" which promotes these tenets in schools. These tenets still exist to this day in schools, where it has blinded so many of the still labour aristocrats in TERF Island:

• Democracy
• Rule of Law
• Individual Liberty
• Mutual Respect and Tolerance

I have highlighted the 'Democracy' part especially since the British public has put an emphasis on the so-called "Democratic" aspect of society. For example, it is now a multi-party system, not like the "stupid dumb two-party system over at America." However consider the fact that it was Labour who has been the dominant party before Thatcher's rise to Prime Minister, and now it has been the Conservatives dominant since then (with the exception of a few years of rule under Tony Blair from the Labour Party). There has been no other party in dominance, and most other parties would just merge with one another usually because of a 'coalition government' (this will also be addressed later).

Tactical voting is a process of voting the right party so that whatever the person wants, they can just support the ideas of that particular party. However this is a dangerous idea as it falls right under reformism. This means that no revolutionary potential would be set. Also certain democratic values are not tolerated whatsoever. Jeremy Corbyn, a social democrat has been ousted from the Labour party on the basis of 'Anti-semitism' despite leftist jewish people supporting Corbyn. This is not democracy. This is just consolidation of capitalist ideas where capitalism only allows you make certain choices before restricting it. Unfortunately many of the British public believe in this fallacious idea, and this makes it harder for it have revolutionary potential.

Speaking of consolidation of capitalist ideas,

What about coalition governments?

The coalition system in the British parliament does not necessarily stop the parties from enacting what they want. If anything it proves that the idea that parties share similar transphobic tendencies with each other. This is another reformist proposition. Just because ideas can be discussed does not mean they will get passed. Bills introduced are not introduced out of thin air or by the British public, they are discussed in house with both the House of Commons and the House of Lords. The House of Lords, meanwhile, is never in line with the British Public, and it mainly consists of reactionary feudal lords that still want to retain their place from the bygone days of the 'Divine Rights of Kings'. The idea that somehow by coalition governments working together it means that they will help to prevent transphobia is an unrealistic proposition at best, deceptive at worst.

Why don't you just "spoil" your vote?

'Spoiling' a vote refers to not voting any candidate and instead making it so that the vote is 'invalid'. It will be still be cast and recorded but it will not be selected for a specific candidate. This is just a 'Get out of jail free' card for those who still believe in the foolishness of "Tactical Voting". These will never be usefulness to anyone, and even getting the entire British public to spoil their votes is not an efficient nor is it a necessary endeavour.

Just make a petition on the official website!

The British Government allows petitions to be made on their official website where it will be made into a 'bill' if enough signs are done. However this never works, and it is known that the British Government will just outright deny many requests made by the British public. Even if we make a supposed petition and a lot of people sign it, it won't make a difference at all, especially if the people are not represented at all in this supposed democracy.

It is clear that not only that the British government is filled with transphobic people, but also that it is useless to vote for this. Therefore it is necessary to initiate revolutionary potential within the British public. That is why communist parties exist in the United Kingdom so that we can finally achieve socialism. Right? Right?

Transphobia within British Communist Parties

There are still plenty of Communist Parties within the Imperial Core, and TERF Island is no exception. I will not be going over all the Communist Parties in the United Kingdom, but I will go over two which have earned a reputation amongst Marxist-Leninists and even the general British public, that is: the Communist Party of Britain (CPB) and the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) (CPGB-ML).

CPB in particular claims to be a successor of Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), a party which had dissolved around the time that the Soviet Union dissolved. CPGB had turned to revisionism and eventually eurocommunism, with its British Road to Socialism which the CPB later carried the torch.

CPGB-ML is not innocent either, often denying the self-determination of the Welsh, Scottish and even Cornish peoples, with the exception of Ireland which it supports a full reunification. They are more 'principled' than CPB but that is irrelevant to this essay. The matter is that this sets a precedent of the transphobia that both parties enact. We will start with the CPGB-ML first since they are the first party to engage in such transphobia.

Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist)

The CPGB-ML has a harsher stance on Identity politics in contrast to any other communist part, a stance which harms its own marxist stance. Case in point, there are plenty of articles 'dismantling' the so-called "Gender Ideology" of Transgender people, all under the Newspaper label 'The Communists' or alternatively known as 'Proletarian'. In the Eighth Congress of the CPGB-ML, the party passed with an overwhelming majority of denouncing the so-called "LGBT Ideology":

Congress therefore resolves that the propagation of identity politics, including LGBT ideology, being reactionary and anti-working class and a harmful distraction and diversion from the class struggle of the proletariat for its social emancipation, is incompatible with membership of the party, rendering those involved in its promotion liable to expulsion.

From this quote alone extracted from a party statement, it is clear that this party is transphobic. But, let's just say that we give this party the benefit of a doubt. We do not know enough to denounce this party as transphobic necessarily. Maybe this party just merely denounces the pinkwashing of the LGBT people, or LGBT liberals specifically. This is not just one party statement, as there are multiple articles and party statements denouncing 'Identity politics' (how the party perceives IDpol), and 'LGBT ideology'.

For example, this article with a misleading title: "Why gay rights is not a class issue" not only denounces homosexuality but also transgender people as well. We will focus on both because a lot of transgender people are also part of the 'LGB' subclass (though there does exist heterosexual transgender people too).

The article says that Racism and Sexism are both class issues, which is a truth. However it immediately denounces homosexuality even within its tagline. But here is the statement I want to focus on the part of gay rights specifically under the heading "Contradictions among the people and how they are manipulated by imperialism":

Now the question of people being unpleasant to others who are a bit different, that is not a class question. We don’t approve of being mean to people who are different. We don’t approve of mocking people because they have wooden legs or are different in any other way. It tends to be a feature of human nature, but of course we are opposed to people being persecuted for being a bit different to the norm.

Only a minority of people are gay, and only a very tiny minority of people have gender dysphoria. However, these people are harmless to society and there is absolutely no need to persecute them.

The western imperialist bourgeoisie has suddenly discovered and embraced gay and transgender rights, which only yesterday it was vigorously opposing, to the point that today it is those who raise even the slightest question over even the most absurd demands of self-appointed LGBT activists who find themselves persecuted.

The advantage to the bourgeoisie of its newly-discovered enthusiasm for gay rights is that it can use them to castigate oppressed countries who stick to traditional religious prejudices on this issue whenever they fail to fall in line with imperialist demands.

Needless to say, the full force of this ‘human rights’ assault never falls on such client states of imperialism as Saudi Arabia, but only on those countries that resist imperialist hegemony. An excessive obsession with LGBT rights can therefore lead the unwary into backing imperialism against anti-imperialist governments.

Italic emphasis was not made by the essay author.

I have bolded the parts for clarity and to make it easier to analyse the parts I will critique. Instead of making proper analysis, they have merely reduced it to 'Being unpleasant to others'. This is a mockery of not only LGBT rights, but it is also a potential mockery of how race and women oppression play in class society. For example, I can just as easily say "White people are just being unpleasant to black people, there's no racism (anymore)" or "Men are just being unpleasant to women, so there's no women oppression (anymore)" and none would be the wiser. Therefore to make a shoddy analysis like this is damaging for a communist party. They just merely state that they don't approve being mean to those who are different after that as if to cover their main point. This is not journalism or proper Marxian analysis.

Next they attempt to use the same method of "They're the exception so we do not need to care." Exceptions are still exceptions no matter how minute they are. If 10% of the people are LGBT of some kind (which is a conservative estimate, there may be a lot more bisexual people than we realise), then it is about 800,000,000 people. If 1% is transgender, then it is 80,000,000. Are 800,000,000 LGBT people just a minority because they're only 10% of the population? They still exist and have always existed, and suffered the same oppression as women did back then. And as always they just backpedal their arguments to make it seem less than worse than it is.

Next is an argument which is filled with deliberate half-truths. Note the word 'suddenly' in the sentence "The western imperialist bourgeoisie has suddenly discovered and embraced gay and transgender rights". They are arguing that the LGBT people have only suddenly appeared, when in reality they have always existed. There was a 'gay panic' in the 80s in the both the United States and TERF Island, and now there exist a 'Trans panic' in the 2020s where transgender people are being actively affected. They did not 'embrace' gay and transgender rights, that is an aspect of pinkwashing, an aspect which still exists in nations like 'Israel'. This is a form where the bourgeoisie tries to downplay the radicalisation of the LGBT people to make sure they cannot have any revolutionary potential. Next they argue that it is not the LGBT people that are being persecuted, but the so-called "Communists" now, that they are now being persecuted for being vocal and attempting to criticise their stance on transgender people. This is not even Marxian analysis at this point. This is already bordering the talking points of Ben Shapiro and Matt Walsh.

Next they point towards the bourgeoisie taking advantage of gay rights in the bourgeoisie. This is the only line I would agree with, if they did not stop at the oppressed countries part. Because, despite having correct analyses on racism and women oppression, they have failed to point out the cultural imperialism which occurred on the oppressed nations centuries earlier. These are not traditional, they are forcibly ingested from the colonialists that had lived on the land before. Nonetheless, it is true that LGBT liberals have criticised other nations for being anti-LGBT and the third world nations have used the talking point of the 'LGBT being a western concept therefore they have to oppose it'. But this is not an issue of internationalism, this is a domestic issue that can only be solved through local contradictions. This paragraph is wrong only merely by ignoring the nuance and oversimplifying the aspects of cultural imperialism and colonialism.

So, this article was about gay rights, what about transgender people? Why are we talking about gay rights if we haven't even talked about trans rights? Well they did not mention transgender people within the article title, but they definitely put mentions of transgender people. This is where their analyses go from incorrect due to underanalysis, to incorrect because of their inherent biases.

Under the heading "LGBT ideology wants more than equal rights", they say something that is outright transphobic:

But, to return to the question of the demands of the self-appointed LGBT activists. Unlike ordinary people who happen to be gay or transgender, they are not happy with simply being allowed to live their lives in peace and without discrimination; it is not just a question of men and women wanting to be accepted even though they’re different.

For the so-called activists, it is a question of going far further than that, to the point of absurdity. Transgender activists want us, for instance, to encourage little boys and little girls who prefer the lifestyle that society offers to people of the opposite sex to the one that accords to their own sex to actually physically mutilate themselves in order to achieve the appearance of a person of the other sex.

This sentence if you were to read it from any conservative outlets like the Daily Wire or Fox News would appear no different. This is not a marxian analysis. Not only is it not marxist, it is also a direct attack on transgender people. They would rather let transgender people continue to engage in stealth, which was the case over 20 years ago, instead of letting people openly accept their gender. They also played the argument of "they're attacking the kids"! This is a reactionary sentiment, and also a lie. There is a certain word they use: 'mutilation'; as a portrayal that the transgender people are attempting to force kids to medically transition. This sentiment is continued later on, as they use anecdotal evidence (which is not evidence whatsoever) to state that the author and another girl grew up to be 'tomboys' but later they disregarded this 'tomboyish' appearance later in their lives. Good for them. What is not good is that they think by saying "It's okay to be who you want to be", it means that they are now being implanted with 'bad thoughts' and now they want to transition. Somehow this person feels threatened because she imagines herself to be in a situation where she had to transition. This author, who is cisgender, does not know how transgender people work, nor does she know what gender dysphoria is.

They later on put a textbook case of Tailism later on stating this:

Actually, the working class as a whole has a lot of common sense, and their attitude will be: “I’m sorry but a man’s a man and a woman’s a woman and you’re not going to be able to mess me around.” Any party that is claiming to be serious, but actually expects workers to believe that a fully equipped male who hasn’t even had an operation is actually female and ought to be allowed to come into women’s changing rooms, is going to be laughed out of court and told: “Look, get lost. This is not a serious party. This is not a party that I can trust to represent my interests, to overthrow capitalism and get a better life for everybody – including the LGBTs.”

I am not going to confirm nor deny that the masses are neutral or even transphobic towards transgender people. But what I am stating with the assumption that if the proletariat supports transphobia, it does not mean the line is correct and it should be followed. This is in direct contradiction to the vanguard party model which has been the leading model in every communist party. Next they state that those who haven't had Sexual Reassignment Surgery and Hormones are still 'men', clearly ignoring the contradictions between sex and gender. Note that they said the word 'LGBTs'. They treat like how a racist would say 'blacks' instead of a Black person. They intentionally attempt to dehumanise LGBT people, which is more inline with people who have no idea what they are talking about when they are "transwomen" or "transmen" or even say the god awful slur which I will not write here. They write this multiple times, which is a clear deterioration of quality from the beginning.

They also said this which is a clear misdirection and misunderstanding of the Base and Superstructure:

In fighting for the interests of the working class as a whole, LGBTs will obviously also benefit.

Socialism will be instantiated, but the contradictions within the masses remain. The masses will continue to hate LGBT people, and the party itself will continue to enforce this under the guise of Identity Politics. As Marx said "No nation can be free it oppresses other nations", and the analogy can applied towards the LGBT people. With rising contradictions, it will be clear that there will be a revert to capitalism, because they had not worked on the superstructure. Without making the masses believe in what they call "Gender Ideology" or making the masses believe it is normal for people to love one another regardless of gender, there is no "socialism". Socialism is not an automated process, and they mindlessly believe it is.

Near the end, they talk about the debate with "Girl Guides" a movement which was originally designed for women, and since they had a debate on whether including transgender women or not (which they should), the author wrote this,

Recently there has been an argument in the Girl Guides. The Girl Guides have been told that a man, a fully equipped hairy male with all the necessary appendages, who self-identifies as a ‘woman’, is perfectly entitled to take young girls out on camping trips without supervision.

Now, can you really accept that nobody is even allowed to protest about that? Nobody is allowed to say: “Well I’m sorry but I’m unhappy about that. I think men are men actually, and I don’t want young girls exposed to the danger that that conceivably could produce. I’m sure this particular person is a lovely person, my daughter would probably be perfectly all right with him/her/them, but I can’t take the risk, I’m sorry.”

They used the euphemism of 'necessary appendages' as if saying they care about gender based on genitalia or not. Will there be 'trans' people who abuse the new system? Absolutely. Does that mean that every trans person is now a predator? Absolutely not. This is directly accusing transgender people (some who are not able to or do not want to transition), of being predators just because they don't have the 'necessary appendages'. I forgot to mention not all people assigned male at birth even have a penis. It is rare, but they directly ignored the existence of intersex people. They directly ignored this issue, one of many issues that they have ignored, then the author has the gall to say this at the end,

And finally, if I’m a man because I say I’m a man – if that is the criterion, then that is surely the purist idealism … and I don’t think I need to say more.

Which is in direct contradiction to what they said earlier!

We don’t approve of being mean to people who are different. We don’t approve of mocking people because they have wooden legs or are different in any other way.

They are directly being 'mean', making the point of this article utterly useless as there is no 'debate' or 'truth' being made, it was nothing but only a jab at transgender people. That is all it was, and the fact it follows this line for the whole party is not only disgusting, but an indication of the whole revisionism of the whole party.

If you, dear reader, think I am done dissecting the entire transphobia on CPGB-ML, I am afraid there is one more which we need to discuss, which not only goes into greater detail of their definitions of sex and gender, but also shows their deep roots in revisionism.

The final article that will be dissected further is called the "The reactionary nightmare of ‘gender fluidity’". This is another speech delivered to the eighth congress.

They begin to express their statement that they wish to have a debate, and that they clearly think that transgender people did not exist years ago,

Marx and Engels and Lenin and Stalin didn’t devote much attention to the politics of gender fluidity because it did not exist as an issue. This concept – contrary to the opinion of those opposed to this motion – is not “as old as humanity”.

Just because Marx and Engels did not devote much to transgender politics is due to how society worked at the time, with a devoted gender binary as a result of preceding societies beforehand. Transgender people existed before, so much so that they are featured in both the Bible (Deuteronomy 22:5 and 23:1), under a negative view of course due to the slave society when the book was written, but it is clear that transgender people have always existed and always will. A fundamental flaw in their historical materialism.

Next they argue the basic of question in their heading "Does material reality exist?" I do not need to answer this question. Because this heading is yet again, misleading, the words under the heading lead to this,

I gave up those subjects and I concentrated on the sciences, thinking that science at least is objective; no-one will argue over the question: is two plus two equal to four?

Lenin quite rightly told us that “if geometrical axioms affected human interests, attempts would certainly be made to refute them”.

What did he mean? There are simple formulas that tell one the volume of a sphere, or how to work out the area of a triangle: half the base times the height. Does anyone fundamentally disagree with that? If a circle thinks it’s a square, is it a square? What a stupid thing to say; no-one’s saying that!

Why can’t a circle self-identify as a square? Is there not some kind of shape fluidity between circles and squares? Are they not fundamentally the same? They all fundamentally consist of area. Why do we differentiate between them at all? Why has humanity worried to define objects as green or blue?

Is there a material reality? There are those who will argue there is no material reality; we are not among them. That is not a Marxist concept.

Emphasised italics not made by essay author

Let's look at what Lenin said when he said the quote.

There is a well-known saying that if geometrical axioms affected human interests attempts would certainly be made to refute them. Theories of natural history which conflicted with the old prejudices of theology provoked, and still provoke, the most rabid opposition. No wonder, therefore, that the Marxian doctrine, which directly serves to enlighten and organise the advanced class in modern society, indicates the tasks facing this class and demonstrates the inevitable replacement (by virtue of economic development) of the present system by a new order—no wonder that this doctrine has had to fight for every step forward in the course of its life.

It is a clear metaphor. Lenin said this to describe human nature, that being: whatever does not exist within natural reality must be thrown out and replaced with a newer model. That is exactly the process that the idea of science operates under. That is "what he meant".

The author then clearly states the formula of a sphere and the area of a triangle, as if it is important to know. This is what the author considers their 'premise', to present it more logically speaking. But then it is not logically sound as the author did not presuppose that said shapes can 'think'. This is a classic example of a non sequitur.

Next the argues that there is a 'fluidity' between a circle and a square. Given that the author loved science, and specifically talked about geometrical axioms, it is a surprise that the author does not consider that there may be a fluidity be them.

If you know your GCSE maths, it is clear that there exists the equation of a circle, that being:

$x^{2}+y^{2}=r^{2}$

For simplicity sake we will use the unit circle (where $r=1$).

However if the square parts was replaced with another variable, let's say alpha ($\alpha$), we now have an equation,

$x^{\alpha }+y^{\alpha }=1$

And if we make it so that alpha approaches infinity with absolute values (makes the equation positive at all times),

$\lim _{\alpha \to \infty }|x^{\alpha }|+|y^{\alpha }|=1$

It does indeed become a square,

The $\alpha$ value used in this image is 50.

There is a desmos link to where you can find such example. Now, why does all this matter? Why do we need this such mathematics? Well the point is that this author does not know how to understand fluidity. Both shapes can exist, but there also exists a middle shape called a "Squircle", does this mean that they are the same? No, they are fundamentally different from one another.

The author is trying to establish a precedent for the transgender people, that there exists a material reality for a circle, square, and a squircle. The values of $\alpha$ can range in many, many values, even values that are not positive or beyond the spectrum. This means that there exists a square and circles, but that there is also exists squircles that are in-between or even out of the spectrum. This is not idealism, this is just a simple nature of material reality, taken from the analogy mentioned here. Why we differentiate at all between a circle and square is because in mathematics, a square and a circle is defined differently. A square cannot be defined through a graph while a circle can be defined easily by the Pythagorean theorem.

Next they actually move onto the topic of Sex, Gender and Gender Fluidity.

Is sex important? Attempts are being made to confuse us as to what ‘sex’ is. Are ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ synonyms? Well they are synonyms, but a certain group of academics in the seventies in the United States decided that they weren’t synonyms. They were going to use ‘gender’ in their own way; they were going to use ‘gender’ to mean the social construct of behaviour surrounding what was expected of the biological differentiation among human beings (men and women).

But biological differentiation between male and female is a real thing. It doesn’t just exist in humanity, it exists in many species throughout the natural world. Sexual reproduction is a natural biological process that has persisted in nature due to the diversity it engenders; it is a phenomenon encountered in the natural world.

[...]

[Idpol] is a fashion; it is a trend. And it suddenly – from being very marginal to certain academic institutions in the 1970s – became mainstream globally worldwide; it was actively promoted. Not promoted by communists, not by socialists, but picked up on and accepted by many of them, because they are led by, and they blindly followed, bourgeoise society down this dead-end.