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.

Next they start by saying another rhetorical question. "Is sex important?" They then state a completely different proposition that does not answer this question, whether 'sex' and 'gender' are synonyms or not. They of course argue that they do not support the separation of 'sex' and 'gender', as if they prefer their language to remain isolated and prescribed. It is not a hard thing to understand between gender and sex, yet they treat like it is an active threat that is harming the revolutionary potential of communism.

Continuing on, they talked about the aspects of biological differentiation. It is true that some animals are able to distinguish between each sex, some animals are more differentiable in sex than others. For example female snakes tend to be larger and heavier than their male counterparts due to the necessity of carrying eggs. or that there exists a matriarchy in Hyenas despite hyenas looking virtually the same. Humans are the least sexually dimorphic species (meaning that they display the least differences between males and females) and often our brains cannot tell or 'clock' whether a person is a transgender or not. And even some species can change their own sex, for example, if a female clownfish dies within the school fish, a male changes their sex and becomes the new female. In other words, biological differences do exist for an average male and female, but these biological differences are largely irrelevant unless if in the context of sexual reproduction, and for same-sex couples there exists the option of adoption or even surrogacy. For humans past the primitive communist mode of production (up until recently), sex, and consequently gender, had always referred to sexual reproduction. Moving past this idea is not only ideal, it is necessary for communism. People are not just sex objects to be used for reproduction. Humans are much, much more than that.

Next they complain about Identity politics as they usually do. Despite it being a real and existing phenomena, they have a clear misunderstanding of Identity politics. Their justification, based on transgender appearing recently from their eyes (which is just empiricism, an idealist phenomenon), means that they blindly accept it as an anti-marxist tendency. It is true that Marx, Lenin, Stalin or Mao did not consider gender initially. But it does not mean there is no understanding of theory regarding gender. Communist parties are beginning to recognise the importance of gender, hell even Maoist parties have already begun to accept transgender people! If you do not accept that for the fact they're maoist, then look at Marxist-leninists such as Leslie Feinberg, a marxist who had made works based on the gender and sex binary.

I will ignore their next heading as it is a reiteration of tailism, so moving on, they talk about the material reality of gender;

Why did it become a fashion to say there’s no such thing a male and female? I think the use of our internal bulletin has evolved to the point where we actually used it successfully to conduct that inner-party debate. The debate came up because of some posts on the party’s main Twitter account; the controller of the account was denounced on Twitter as “fascist” and “racist”.

Is it true? Are we going to get up here at congress and denounce comrades in debate? Will we tell them that “If you say X,Y and Z – then that’s it! I’m off! Screw the lot of you!”?

Is that a comradely way to have a debate? Does that forward our arguments? Does it help us reach a sound understanding? It does not! We’ve got to reckon with science, we’ve got to reckon with social phenomena. We have to come to a correct position which serves our class, and if we fail to do so, our organisation will fail to exist.

Italic emphasis was not made by essay author.

Instead of investigating why they just claim instead that it became a fashion, something out of thin air. They claim 'debate' but instead of doing the research that is asked of a communist party, they do the exact opposite, uphold their dogma instead of supporting transgender people. They did not held a principle discussion, rather they claim to uphold science, when they do the exact opposite.

Compared with the other articles we have seen, there is just filler which has nothing to do with transgender people. It contains topics about how the bourgeoisie use science to keep their profits high, yadda yadda. It is important to talk about, but not in this essay.

Thus they start get into the party known as Red Fightback, a group which had dissolved in January 2023 due to its racist stances. They had released an article about gender and now they are attempting to dismantle it;

So the question is sexuality: how does this tie up with the question of sexuality? And we come back to that innocuous post on Twitter, which I thought was obviously hilarious because I thought it was non-controversial.

We wrote: “There is a group of self-proclaimed ‘socialists’ who are not actually any longer fighting against our oppression, they’re fighting against reality!” and posted a link to an article.

Why did we say that? They’re a circle of people who broke away from a very small group which you may know, called the RCG. This circle wrote a blog called ‘Red Fightback’, and the bottom line is, their position is that there’s no such thing as gender.

Now let us see if that is correct. After the demise of their website, the only way to look at it now is through an archival site. After acquiring the article in question, let us see what they actually say:

The idea that women’s oppression originates in their biology is most strongly associated with ‘radical feminism’, which holds that women are a biological ‘caste’ and that this fact, not class, is the primary social contradiction – a position that has led to radical feminists obscuring racism and numerous other forms of oppressions. Yet strangely enough there is some overlap between radical feminism and the position of many socialists on ‘the woman question’. While Marx and Engels remain foundational as they related women’s oppression to class relations, problems arise with dogmatic readings of especially Engels within the short-sighted, self-contained organisations that plague the British left. This is most apparent with the flagrant transphobia of the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist), but it is also prevalent in Trotskyist groups. For instance, the International Marxist Tendency (IMT, successor to the Militant Tendency) have an article on LGBT oppression that asks, ‘what is the point of denying the existence of the male and female sex, with all their anatomic and biological differences?’.

[...]

if Engelsian orthodoxy ‘explains why houseworkers are economically dependent; it does not explain why houseworkers are women.’[4] Engels’ account of patriarchy relied on the claim, since falsified by more recent anthropological studies, that to ‘procure the necessities of life had always been the business of the man; he produced and owned the means of doing so.’ In other words, for Engels there had always been a fundamental natural division of labour along “sex” lines. This led to an overly mechanistic account of women’s subordination... The problems with this mechanistic account are particularly apparent if we critically examine patterns of ‘primitive accumulation’ in transitions to capitalism.

Under feudalism in Europe, while land was usually transmitted via male lineage and there was nothing like any idyllic ‘primitive communism’, women peasants often did have a considerable degree of autonomy from the men of their own class, particularly because of the shared use of the ‘commons’ – forests, lakes and wild pastures etc.

This changed with the land privatisations, the enclosure of the commons and the forced wage-labour which Marx associated with primitive accumulation... As one would expect, this was met with intense peasant resistance, and the feudal and rising bourgeois classes endeavoured to stabilise and discipline the impoverished landless population, notably by making women into a new, more easily exploitable underclass.

[T]his primitive accumulation coincided with the ‘Great Witch-Hunt’ of the sixteenth-seventeenth centuries, which predominately targeted women and especially women’s attempts to control their reproductive life: abortion and infanticide were strongly associated with witchcraft, as were “deviant” sexualities.

[...]

[T]hroughout history there have been a variety of human relations that falsify crude arguments about natural binarised “sex” roles – for instance the South Asian hijra and Lakota wíŋkte, and dozens of other instances. Such relations have entailed people being ‘reassigned from masculine to feminine or vice versa; in other cultures, trans people have been defined as a third or even fourth gender; in still others, they have been defined as non-gendered.’ While in pre-capitalist class societies these and other forms of gender/sexuality expression were rarely allowed completely free expression, it is undeniable that under capitalism they have been subjected to unprecedentedly systematic suppression.

[...]

Arguments that the ‘two-sexes model’ is proved correct by scientific “discoveries” about human biology, including the recent spurious concept of “sex chromosomes”, is nonsense; there is no unified experience that can be called biological womanhood. Biological variations among humans, though consequential, are not uniform. For instance far from all women can become pregnant, or menstruate, belying notions of biologically-determined sexism. Human biological variations have always been a spectrum: scientists now acknowledge that as many as 1 person in 100 have a so-called ‘intersex condition’ – chromosomal, gonad, genital or secondary sex characteristics that don’t easily fit into two distinct sexual categories. Indeed, scientists are now finding that almost every human body is ‘a patchwork of genetically distinct cells, some with a sex that might not match that of the rest of their body’.

This article was released a month after the party statement was released by the CPGB-ML, however it is still their stance and the blog did state that they have written about sex and gender in past. I also recommend reading the entire article for yourself to get a clear understanding of sex and gender, just abridging it is not enough to give it justice.

So it is clear that Red Fightback does not agree with the 'Engelsian' hypothesis that Women's oppression had existed on the basis of sex, but rather presupposes a gradual increase of women's oppression, which meant that private property, while still in the hands of the man due to them holding the first instruments of labour and currency, had spawned women's oppression; the tension and contradictions between the oppression of a woman by man only gradually increased as time went on. This can be exemplified by homosexuality and transgender people as well. Homosexuality was not uncommon in Ancient Greece, but it soon became a taboo topic, especially exemplified by the Bible (Leviticus 20:13 and Romans 1:26-31) and the increased Roman influence once it had adopted Christianity.

Red Fightback is arguing that it is not the basis of 'sex' that is the oppression but rather private property, a non-controversial statement within Marxists. What does CPGB-ML say about this?

Rather, gender, they claim, is some kind of medical conspiracy where, at birth, the doctors go away and huddle together and they ‘assign a gender role’ to you. So, pregnant mothers: when you have your 20-week ultrasound scan, you’re not having a scan to see whether your baby is a boy or a girl (say ‘Red Fightback’). No; that’s all medical conspiracy! And when the baby is born, they inspect the baby to say it’s a boy or a girl – well that’s all medical conspiracy, too! These things (boys and girls, men and women) aren’t real – don’t you see??

A medical conspiracy. This is the pinnacle of non-seriousness from the CPGB-ML that it can be regarded as a joke by a dedicated troll who wants to infiltrate socialist spaces. But unfortunately we must take this statement as serious as we can, so thus I will do.

Gender (or more specifically gender roles) is not a matter of conspiracy. Doctors do their job like a worker does. Gender is ingrained with these people as a matter of subsistence, they must know what gender it has mainly by genitalia and often genitalia alone. Doctors do not huddle to assign what 'gender' you have. This is not only stupid but also inefficient. Pregnant people (not necessarily women) often get their 20-week ultrasound scan, and at around 20 weeks is when genitalia begins to form. From there, the doctor states that the gender of the child based only on the genitalia alone. This is the conspiracy bit if you can take the word "conspiracy" in any seriousness. The gender of the child is not formed as a result of their initial characteristics (that being genitalia) but rather their interests which will only grow to become more and more complex and even experience gender euphoria towards particular things. "One is not born but rather becomes a woman."

Next is that they complain that they are called TERFs, and their only response is that the author is not a feminist. There is nothing of substance in this paragraph.

However the next is one that they actually disregard the existence of 'ableism',

There is even a movement termed ‘ableism’ or ‘trans-ableism’. There exist people who say: “I look as if I’ve got two arms and two legs, but actually in reality, I feel like I was born disabled.”

There are people who are petitioning for the right to have an arm or a leg cut off; to have an operation which will make their physical form conform to how they feel; “my inner essence”.

They don't consider the existence of hidden disabilities (Autism, Dyslexia, Dyscalculia), and not only that, they think that people want to petition to have their arms or legs cut off. I want to ask how this relates to transgender people. I do not disagree with the second paragraph. There should be no right to be able to mutilate yourself. However in this case, they are pushing a narrative that shifts the goal posts towards the "mutilation" of Sexual Reassignment Surgery. They do not say it, but they certainly imply it.

Next they argue about Radical Feminism, again, this is not important, and I really don't disagree with anything they say.

Then they bring us back to the attention of "transwomen". This is not my wording, this is what their heading says. To reiterate, they use the exact same thing point with "LGBTs". It is not "transwomen" It is a trans women. Trans is an adjective, women is a noun. Combination of both makes it a target, it dehumanises people. Take the case of "blacks" for example.

First of all, I would urge then to look very carefully at their figures and their sources. What is the actual percentage of the working class that are transgender?

It’s very difficult to find out. (A member of audience: “Ten percent of the population!”)

No. It’s very far from that figure. It is statistically so small as to be insignificant. It’s absolutely tiny. But, if you take everyone who is ‘gay’ and tell them “actually really, you’re transgender”; if you take everyone who is ‘confused during puberty’ – well, everyone’s confused during puberty! – “but actually, probably you’re transgender”. If transgender becomes your fashionable label that you impose on everyone who feels alienated in society, then you start to arrive at these incredible figures.

Because actually, the percentage of people who are alienated in society is massive; absolutely bloody massive. Because alienation is a product of capitalist exploitation, of its individualism and its dissatisfying, isolationist, selfish culture.

Italic emphasis was not made by essay author

They again make the same argument that just because they're a minority does not mean they do not need to be looked out for. They claim it's insignificant yet they can't prove that it is the case. Unfortunately transgender people are already understudied, and it will likely be the case for a long time. But they argue something strange. Being gay does not mean you are 'transgender'. No transgender person argues that. Also 'confused' during puberty is another false statement. As stated before, it is not gender dysphoria that may make you transgender, but gender euphoria.

Transgender people is not a product of alienation. The feeling of gender dysphoria exists as a result of society not directly helping transgender people. That is an effect that alienation provides to transgender people, by not making them appear as their true selves. This is not individualism, where society represses a quality of themselves, it is not individualist in any way to attempt to be yourself.

I will conclude this long ramble of this so-called party statement by putting this lovely message by the CPGB-ML themselves;

So I will conclude by saying: We are not transphobic! There’s nothing to be afraid of in this statement.

Italic emphasis was not made by essay author

Note that the definition of "phobia" is either fear or hate. And hate this is.

The CPGB-ML has made their message clear. They do not support transgender people, which is shocking for a communist party. Their message continues to be perpetuated to this day, with CPGB-ML aligning themselves with reactionary organisations and groups. Case in point, Joti Brar, one of the leaders of the CPGB-ML, had been interviewed by Caleb Maupin, who said this about "Transgenderism",

We're not against a trans person, It's the ideology that's being pushed on that says you are what you think you are. Now this is total idealism.

CPGB-ML is a "communist" party that does not deserve support nor recognition by any communist or transgender person.

Communist Party of Britain

As stated earlier, the CPB claims itself to be a successor of the later dissolved party of the CPGB. This meant it carried the torch, holding onto its ideal of the "British Road to Socialism", another method to attempt to reach Socialism, and also consequently to support Labour as a result of it. Which, I might remind again, is filled with transphobic people. Which is no coincidence that this means that they also present transphobic statements too.

Thus I present a statement on the 'Gender Recognition Bill and Equality Law' made by the CPB. For context, this bill was presented in Scotland where it did not require people with Gender Dysphoria to get a Gender Recognition Certificate. You only needed to self-identify as transgender to get access to a Gender Recognition Certficate. The CPB, of course, had disapproval of the statement, and presents a series of points. But before they denote any transphobia, they perform a smokescreen of pretending to support transgender people;

The Communist Party of Britain believes that the current system for transgender people to gain access to services and achieve safe and legal gender transition requires substantial resourcing. If the aim of this Bill is to make the lives of trans people easier, then it is a failure. The Communist Party supports the right of trans people to live free from discrimination and prejudice. This attempt to change the law does nothing for their access to health, medical, housing, advisory and other services sensitive to their needs.

What does that mean? This bill is intended for easier access towards transgender people. Bureaucracy within the National Health Service (NHS) has been a big problem for transgender people, especially given how horrid the service is. This is intended to make it easier and make it so people can transition more easily without bureaucracy being a factor.

They also state the same bureaucracy, that the definition of 'sex' must be united across both countries,

A system for allowing someone to change their legal sex has to work across Britain as a whole. This is because the legal term ‘sex’ is referred to in hundreds of pieces of legislation which are both reserved to Westminster and devolved to the Scottish Parliament. For this reason, when the Labour government decided to introduce the 2004 Gender Recognition Act it reached agreement with the devolved assemblies/ parliaments that the Westminster government would create a single legal framework for Britain as a whole. To make this possible, the Scottish Parliament passed the Sewel resolution granting consent for Westminster to legislate in devolved areas for this specific purpose.

These facts were known by the Scottish government and by civil servants before it embarked on going it alone in reforming the GRA in Scotland. It was always clear that a Scotland-only scheme would mean that Gender Recognition Certificates issued in Scotland would apply only to reserved areas of law. Anyone applying for and obtaining a GRC in Scotland under the new scheme could be sure of their rights in relation to devolved areas – such as the recording of births, deaths and marriages by the National Records of Scotland, or the Scottish NHS – but would have no idea where they stood in relation to reserved areas such as pensions, (most) social security benefits and areas covered by the Equality Act such as employment protection during pregnancy, maternity pay and other important rights.

Instead of resolving these issues, ideally in advance of introducing legislation, the Scottish government stuck to its position that the GRR bill had no effect at all on the operation of the Equality Act. They continue to claim it is an administrative change only and there is simply nothing to consider.

So they are despising Scotland on the basis that decentralisation would make it more chaotic, a formation of 'legal chaos' as they would put it. And yet the CPB claims to be in support of "Self-determination". Such lies were spread indeed.

Legal jargon aside, this is where the issue matters, where the CPB considers the definition of sex,

The effect of the Bill is that the legal definition of a ‘man’ and a ‘woman’ and the people who are included in these categories will be different in Scotland than in England and Wales. In other words, there will be two different legal definitions of sex in operation within the UK. No-one knows how that will work in practice. It has never been examined. It is likely to mean that people with a Scottish GRC will have separate legal identities for different purposes.

The effect is to create legal chaos for service providers and organisations in the different countries of the UK and for UK- and Britain-wide organisations. The groups of people in sex-related categories will be entirely different in Scotland on one side and England and Wales on the other.

Note that there existing two different definition of sex in two nations was formed a separation measure between the bureaucracy of the NHS England and NHS Scotland. They already process things different in contrast to England. The idea of 'legal chaos' presupposes the CPB does not support self determination.

However here is where they argue the same arguments as a TERF, where they state such bullshitery,

In particular, the UK Gender Recognition Act 2004 focuses on people with ‘gender dysphoria’ – their sexed body causes psychological distress such that medical/ surgical interventions are deemed necessary. They are the only group eligible for a GRC and thereby entitled to change their legal sex on their birth certificate.

The Scottish GRR Bill allows anyone over the age of 16 access to a GRC, with no medical requirement. Anyone is eligible who self-identifies into an ‘acquired gender’ and can provide fairly minimal evidence of living in this for at least three months is eligible. Sex offenders and those charged with sexual offences can apply, MSPs having voted down amendments to exclude them. The implications of self-ID as the sole requirement for access to single-sex spaces and facilities are serious when it comes to safeguarding women and children from predatory and abusive behaviour by men who can simply declare themselves to be women.

They do not define the 'man' in this case. And the fact they only consider women and not men too means they fall right into the aspect of 'TERFs', exactly as stated. There has been no evidence that predators who claim to be transgender actually exist, as of now. This is fearmongering.

This reform could pose great difficulties for education institutions, sports organisations and other clubs and societies. They have to work out how to meet their legal duties under the 2010 Equality Act and make defensible decisions. They must balance conflicts of rights under the Equality Act and, if they are public sector bodies, fulfil the public sector equality duty and promote good relations between people with different ‘protected characteristics’ (which include ‘sex’ and ‘gender reassignment’). This is not a simple matter, and there are sure to be legal challenges. Navigating complex legislation while managing different legal definitions of sex which contain very different groups within them will not be easy.

They whine about how difficult it will be to change the laws now given how the bureaucratic system works in the first place. Also specifically what groups? The definition of sex has not changed, only a means to acquire the change of sex.

Some argue these changes involve very small numbers of people and therefore the impact will be minimal. However, the wider context of the social transitioning of children in schools under government guidance puts that in doubt.

The context of social transitioning within schools has nothing to do with the inclusion of transgender people within single-sex spaces. The fact they include this at all is concerning when they are two different issues that relate to transgender people.

The CPB makes a horrible statement once more,

The real innovation of this Bill is to legislate for the self-ID of someone’s legal sex, embedding self-declared ‘gender identity’ in law. But when pursued to the exclusion of such considerations as the sex-based rights of women, and the fragmentation of equality legislation across Britain, it undermines the drive to build unity within and between the working class and the oppressed and disadvantaged groups in our society.

It undermines? It undermines the drive to build unity? Are they suggesting the same argument of the CPGB-ML, that helping transgender people would mean that there would a disunity in class struggle? And again they mention women, never about the transgender people themselves and how they feel about the Gender Recognition Bill.

The Communist Party is the only political party with a coherent political analysis of sex and gender. Gender as an ideological construct should not be confused or conflated with the material reality of biological sex. Gender is the vehicle through which misogyny is enacted and normalised. Gender identity ideology is well- suited to the needs of the capitalist class, focusing as it does on individual as opposed to collective rights, enabling and supporting the super-exploitation of women.

They separate the idea of gender and sex yet assert the same answer as Radical Feminists but with extra steps; that the oppression of women is caused solely because the idea of a biological sex. They automatically assert the sexual division of labour and the creation of 'Gender' is thus what had lead to women's oppression. This is incorrect, and we had seen thus far that a sexual division of labour is not the precedent for oppression of women. And thus they state the idea of a Gender Ideology. The idea that is apparently suited to the needs of a capitalist class. This is, by definition, a TERF party.

What is the aftermath of this article that was posted? Well the website reached 1 million views (supposedly) and the website was down for a few moments. As a result, the CPB posted their on the X (formerly Twitter) account,

CP WON’T BE SILENCED - publication of our executive statement on ‘The Gender Recognition Bill and Equality Law’ has resulted in a million views and our website being zapped, but we won’t be silenced.

The fact this had gotten popular has resulted in people like J.K. Rowling herself, an infamous TERF in the United Kingdom (We will get onto her later) to post a response to this.

3 months after the post was released, there was an article posted on Challenge, a magazine blog site managed by the Youth Communist League (Britain). This article is titled Towards working class unity on sex and gender which a particular individual named Eben Williams, a member of the YCL Glasgow branch, and not only that an LGBT+ member of the YCL Branch. Because she is a part of the LGBT community, I will make sure to be more meticulous on her article which is necessary to prove that not everyone in the LGBT Community is an ally.

Let’s start with what should be a simple position. Despite efforts by some postmodernists to reduce sex to a meaningless spectrum, 99.98% of human beings can be fairly equally divided into possession or not of Y chromosomes which also, all things being well, define our potential role in reproduction. By this or several other established definitions of sex, including gamete production or clusters of sex traits, we, like many other animals, are a sexually dimorphic species divided between males and females, and the existence of a very small number of intersex people does not contradict this binary trend. Sex is not “assigned at birth”, it is identified, and almost always identified correctly. To deny this would be to deny scientific fact which, as materialists, is unacceptable.

What is this reduction? The idea of reduction has the implication that is something lost. Let us consider the opposite factor. If we reduce this assumed meaningless spectrum to the idea of sex as we know it today (What rules today's world is biological essentialism), then it is a reduction. And history shows it is the case. The end of Primitive Communism had brought a new era, Slave Society. This slave society, with the invention of private property, needed to ensure that private property was reserved "rightfully" to the hands of man. What does this mean? Only ensure that those who can engage in sexual intercourse are allowed. This meant the gradual degradation of not only LGB people, but also transgender people since they cannot reproduce as their desired gender and often are part of the LGB subclass. Not only that, transgender people are muddling the waters, ensuring that the idea of biological essentialism would remain forever faltered. Unfortunately this did not happen, and this had lead to further oppression of transgender people over the coming centuries.

Continuing on, they fall into the trap of being ignoramus regarding exceptions, essentially stating that either sex chromosomes or genitalia matters in determining our sex. Why does genitalia or sex chromosomes matter in determining sex? Do you need to define such matters or can you avoid them for a deeper, more nuanced analysis? Williams doesn't think so. And then they cast a wide net by presupposing the 'others' under "other established definitions of sex", thus allowing Williams to shift the goal posts as they desire. And therefore they conclude with their ignoramus, that intersex people do not contradict this binary trend. A sentence which in of itself a contradiction, as by any logic, you can easily conclude that the idea of a binary system cannot work with the existence of Intersex people, not to mention transgender people transitioning, who change their body to align with their desired gender, which may change from one to the other (or even neither), ensures that this definition of sex under the biological essentialist lens cannot exist.

With their incorrect logic with the addition of an incorrect premise, it creates an incorrect conclusion. That sex is not 'assigned at birth'. This is an incorrect statement. As stated earlier, doctors just look at genitalia and ensure that whoever this newborn person is, they are either male or female. This is how sex is characterised. At first sight, nevermore. And they conclude as 'Science', a 'science' which had failed its hypothesis, a 'science' which they have made the conclusion before its studies, a 'science' which had failed to adhere to the scientific method! This is a disgrace to science and not only that, Marxism-Leninism as well.

Marxists recognise that the oppression of women, here understood by its traditional sex-based definition, stems from class society, and that prior to class society, men and women, although different due to sex, were equal in status. With the emergence of private property and the division of society into classes, gender (i.e., socially constructed associations with the sexes) was then weaponised to ensure male dominance over women and male entitlement to property and wealth. Gender is also used to divide men and women and prevent them from uniting as a class against their common oppressors. As the basis of women’s oppression, class society must be overthrown through a working-class unity of the sexes.

Williams does not even deny that these so-called "marxists" refute the traditional definition of sex! And from these premises causes devastating results. They first state that gender existed before private property (which is correct) but then later state that Gender is also used to divide men and women to not unite them? Which one is it? Does Williams advocate for gender abolitionism? Either way this is incorrect. Gender Roles formed as a basis of private property, which is reactionary and must be dissolved. Gender, on the other hand, had existed for thousands if not millions of years. It is not necessarily reactionary for a society to use the concept of Gender.

They later get onto the idea of Radical Feminists, whom Williams being the spokesperson for the CPB, states that the CPB is distant from the radfems. Williams defines these Radical Feminists as sex-materialists for the rest of essay, which means I will use that term for this critique as well.

One thing the author notes is the idea "Biological Determinism", which the author seems to adequately debunk this idea that male are innately superior to females. As a consequence, the author states this,

In reaction to this regressive worldview, some feminists have also come to argue that it is also biological determinism to claim that sex has any bearing upon women’s oppression whatsoever, but Marxists hold that it is an uncontroversial position that oppression of one sex over another could not have developed without sexual differences between them, with class society being the determining factor.

We have already discussed the ideas from Red Fightback that the idea of oppression occurring based on purely sex lines is an overly mechanistic idea, so stating something that is outdated implies they advocate for gender abolitionism, a revisionist viewpoint. There are sexual differences between the average woman and man, but these ideas of sexual division of labour causing the instance women's oppression is a flawed aspect. And it is not necessarily class society that amplifies these aspects but private property. Classes formed as a result of private property.

Next we get into the most contentious section of the article "Gender Identity Ideology". To which it begins by addressing the earlier statement from the CPB;

One of the most contentious parts of the Communist Party statement was this: “Gender identity ideology is well-suited to the needs of the capitalist class, focusing as it does on individual as opposed to collective rights, enabling and supporting the super-exploitation of women.” To some unfamiliar with contemporary gender studies as a field, this line has been interpreted as implying that trans people are dangerous or that we oppose their existence as anti-Marxist. This is absolutely not the case, and just as it is not misogynistic to critique radical feminism, nor racist to critique the flaws of intersectionality frameworks, a critique of gender identity ideology is certainly not transphobic.

Italic emphasis was not made by essay author.

The statement that the CPB imposed does necessarily suggest that trans people are dangerous or that their existence is anti-Marxist. It assumes that the idea of a "gender identity" had only existed for a certain period of time, as Williams states later on, the concept of a "Gender Identity" was only popularised in the late 2000s. They make the incorrect thing to assume that intersectionality and Gender Identity are the same thing. Radical Feminism is revisionist. Intersectionality is revisionist. Radfems is a revisionist concept popularised by liberalism. Intersectionality emerged out of racist and colonialist ideas. Gender Identity on the other hand does not fit any of these categories. Gender Identity is merely a concept that is thought out of cultures from Primitive Communist societies, and it is the modernisation of such concept, where it suggests that a person may have a different gender than what was assigned to them. There is no idealism here.

After that, they get into the concept of queer theory, which I do not think is a material thing, and actually is a product or at least made around the same time as Intersectionality. However Williams confuses this with 'Gender Identity Ideology', as expected.

Gender dysphoria is the very real feeling of psychological distress felt as a result of one’s sexed body which can lead to desires to alter the body through hormones and surgeries to more closely resemble the opposite sex and make this distress less acute. It is completely understandable that postmodernism would be so enticing to a group who feels in conflict with their natal sex, and the idea that gender identity is biologically, socially, and politically relevant, but sex is not, therefore becomes very attractive.

Gender identity as a concept, popularized in the late 2000’s by trans activists such as Julia Serano, then spread to the public consciousness in Britain partly through liberal lobbying organisations such as Stonewall, is usually understood today as the internalised self-perception of a person as being a “girl”, “boy”, “man”, “woman”, or something else, including “non-binary” identities, with these terms divorced from their traditional sex-based definitions.

Some believe that gender identity is innate and immutable, arguing that it develops due to biological and environmental factors, much like sexual orientation. The comparison continues when it is argued that gender identity is discovered through a process of self-reflection, and can therefore be either accepted or repressed, but not changed. As a part of this theory, gender dysphoria is believed to develop as a result of incongruence between innate gender identity and biological sex—an incongruence which also makes a person “transgender”. If gender identity and biological sex coincide, then you are “cisgender”. By this logic, gender dysphoria may be alleviated by changing your body to match “who you really are” on the inside, i.e., gender identity. This “gender essence theory” argues that it is not your sex which defines you, but your immutable gender identity.

So this is the crux of the matter in how they define or rather refute gender identity. First they talk about Gender dysphoria. They describe it as if their desired gender contradicts the apparent "birth sex". This is nonsense, and as described in my past essay, not all trans people suffer gender dysphoria. It is not dysphoria, but euphoria that is desirable to them. To present themselves as who they while feeling such comfort. To ignore this connection where the trans person wants to be happy with their desired gender and instead focus on gender dysphoria as if it is some sort of disease ignores the entire purpose of trans people in general. This leads to tangents especially in ableist circles where people think autism is caused by vaccines, or that autism can be cured by "therapies". This same line of reasoning can be devastating to a potential transgender or even cis reader. And they claim that such transgender people are attracted to the apparent "murky" waters of the sex definition, even though we can already state sex is already murky as it is.

Next they talk about the popularisation of the 'Gender Identity' definition. Even though it is practically irrelevant as it does nothing but bring context on how the definition came about.

Next they use the assumption that gender identity is immutable. I do not agree with this approach, rather gender identity can change but in most cases that gender identity stays relatively the same within a person's life. Gender Identity does not necessarily develop through biology itself but instead it is also impacted by culture. Biochemical dysphoria is a real thing, and not experiencing the same puberty changes can be dysphoric to many transgender people. But there's also a social factor, where someone is called by their assigned gender. It can be true that someone can discover their true selves as some LGBT people call it, but it can also change. By how much varies, some may be genderfluid, some may be non-binary, some people may prefer to be a particular gender, or some may not prefer any of what I mentioned already, and prefer to not have a gender at all.

Regardless, this author uses queer theory analysis which will only lead them to detract from the issue at hand, and we will see it soon.

Next the author starts critiquing another gender theorist, stating that it is only the social role that defines us, in other words it follows the same analogy of "If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it is most likely a duck". This is a flawed approach too, and the author acknowledges that the former theorists who argue it is immutable state that it places an emphasis on medical transition and passing. Passing is a construct formed by society so that society remains congruent with its binary sex structure. It must be abolished for any transgender people to fully express themselves. So this is a transmedicalist approach to transgender people.

To Marxists, it should be fairly clear that gender identity ideology, be it gender essence theory or gender as performance, is in conflict with dialectical materialism. As materialists, we reject the idea that reality is shaped by either perception or self-perception. Reality exists first and then we perceive it second, so one cannot perceive oneself into becoming a man or a woman. In arguing that men and women are defined by their social role and appearance, gender as performance theory also falls flat. If a woman is so masculine that she looks male, does she then become a man? Is a man who breaks the gender roles of their sex really a woman? Would a woman who grows up on a desert island no longer be a woman because she has no concept of female gender roles, and because she does not know what a woman is? Depending on your position, these can either be interesting thought experiments or deeply misogynistic. Postmodernists may entertain them as possibilities, but Marxists cannot.

This does not, however, deny shared experiences of discrimination in very specific cases. A minority of passing trans women may experience some aspects of misogyny due to being perceived as female, in the same way that straight men may experience homophobia due to being perceived as gay, but this perception does not define social categorisation. Sex is still the defining factor, with misogyny experienced in relation to perceived sex, rather than gender identity.

I agree with Williams that Gender Essence and Gender as Performance are both flawed approaches to understanding gender identity. That is why as Marxists, we must make our own analyses as to understand what Gender really is. Williams states the obvious if you know anything about materialism, however it becomes clear that they use it as an argument to debunk the idea that a man or a woman (or a non-binary person, funny how did they not mention that given they're LGBT). As I said in my last essay, self-identification is not necessarily immaterial or undialectical. The cisgender people do not wish to see exceptions, they wish to see "cisgender" individuals. It is not that self-identification is wrong, rather the reductionist viewpoint of cisgender people. Exceptions exist within gender identities, and it's clear with their denial of self-identification, it means that Williams deny non-binary identities in general.

There is a desperate need for more research into trans and gender identities, a contentious field of study partly obstructed by current divisions, but by considering the wide array of people with experiences of such identities, as well as gender dysphoria, we can at least draw a few conclusions. For one, gender identity is not innate and people may question or change their gender identities throughout their lives based on cultural and ideological influences, including non-trans people.

When I was very young, I had long hair, didn’t like football, enjoyed playing with girls, and looked like one. I was confused why everyone treated me different, and surprised my mum one day by asking her if I was a boy or a girl. Of course, she told me I was a boy, and I left it there, but in that moment, I had definitely questioned my gender identity and unintentionally adopted both the appearance and certain gender roles of a girl. Did this literally make me one? No. But if I had then gone on to develop gender dysphoria and start identifying as trans, I could easily point to this experience and argue that I had always known on some level that I was never really a man. This makes me highly doubtful of people who claim that they realised their gender identities in early childhood through retrospective accounts of performing masculine or feminine gender roles.

They brought up the issues of lack of studies on transgender people, which is a valid and definite concern. However there are numerous reasons for which transgender people are understudied, including but not limited to political reasons. They also state that gender identity is not innate which is also true. However they state with overexaggeration that this includes "non-trans" (or they should have said cis) people. This is true, but cis people do not think like transgender people. This should be well-known to an LGBT person like Williams here. Cis people may think once or twice of what would it be like to be the opposite gender, but none think that they should transition. A transgender person often think of what it would be to be transgender.

Then they bring up anecdotal evidence. They question of the idea of "signs". Signs can mean you are transgender, but it does not often mean so. You do not need to have "signs" that you are transgender. Some people realise that they are transgender from early childhood. That should be respected. I do not understand why Williams is doubtful on this.

As for gender dysphoria, people have testified to a variety of external causes which can be quite separate from any innate incongruence. Gender dysphoria can be triggered, or at least aggravated, by trauma, body issues, internalised homophobia, or many other things. Social and medical transition are proven to be psychologically beneficial in some cases, while others may be resolved through mental healthcare, which needs substantial resourcing. Either way, a science and evidence-based pathway must be chosen—a process which is obstructed by simplistic narratives of “altering physical bodies to match gendered souls”.

I have boldened the word "testified" as it leads to a link to a study. We will take a closer look later.

They state that Gender Dysphoria can b triggered by trauma, body issues, internalised homophobia and many other things to escape their examples with little substance. We can easily disclose internalised homophobia as sexual orientation and gender identity are two different concepts, as for trauma, we can easily apply this to homosexual people, in fact this is what some Christian groups say, that homosexual people deserve pity because it is trauma that gives them their homosexuality, and to eliminate homosexuality, one must rid themselves of trauma! For an LGBT person to say this is ignorance at best, deception at worst! For body issues, cis and trans people can experience body dysmorphia, but it is only transgender peoplee that can experience gender dysphoria. no person with body dysmporphia thinks about their genitalia, or the fact they are still their assigned gender, only transgender people with gender dysphoria think this!

Some transgender people do not want to transition. That is respectable and acceptable. However there is certainly a large number of people who do want to transition both medically and socially. People with gender dysphoria often medical transition because it is how they will feel once they pass. This alternative suggestion leans into the discussion of conversion therapy, which is a dangerous outlook to see.

Now let us consider the study. It is published in 30th April 2021. This work is not peer reviewed. This is a study of detransitioners (n = 237) who took part in a survey. This consists of both male and female detransitioners. What is wrong with this study? They collected samples from two sources, r/detrans and a website known as "post trans", both transphobic groups, which will most definitely alter the answers. This is already not a good study to cite. These people will biased and thus their answers can and will be incorrect to the general population. Am I ignoring their answers? Yes because they already display political biases towards transgender people. There can and does exist detransitioners who do not despise transgender people.

They a multitude of reasons why people chose to detransition, and the most common is because their "gender dysphoria was related to other issues". This is a vague statement. Why is it vague? Gender dysphoria can relate to other issues such as depression. Those who transition don't necessarily fix their depression. Transgender people are usually aware of this fact. Next was "Health concerns" which may suggest that these detransitioners are uneducated (no offense). Interesting to note that 43% of the population chose that their "political views change". 1 in 2 people chose this answer. It is no surprise given how toxic these two sample sources are.

Next they wrote on how well they believe to be well-informed. 45% of the population don't believe to be well-informed. 33% felt they were partially informed. 18% felt they are completely informed, and 5% is not sure. I do not trust these numbers given the biased nature of these sample sources. Ideally your sample should be as unbiased as possible, but it is not. The detransitioners should've been aware of what they were getting into. What does it mean that they were not informed? Are they lying? Most people use surveys to gain some money. However in this case, I believe it is political biases that cause this issue and not necessarily about truth given the sample source.

In other words, this is a bullshit study. Given this sample is biased, it will give us no information on actual detransitioners. The fact Williams cited this is a disgrace to her already damaging reputation.

Continuing on from our brief tangent, Williams continues to regurgitate nonsense;

Unlike gender identity, gender dysphoria could have some biological basis, in the same way that many other psychological conditions have genetic components. The problem with gender identity ideology is that it turns the phenomena on its head, ascribing dysphoria to a material inner identity, rather than the other way round. Gender identity ideology actually accommodates people who routinely change their gender identity in the case of people who identify as “genderfluid”. In this way, the ideology allows for the fact that gender identity is not innate by creating a new “innate” identity that changes, painting over clear contradictions in the belief system by allowing for a mutable immutable. Similarly, the tenet that “everybody has a gender identity” is upheld, while simultaneously defining some people as “agender” (lacking gender identity).

So do they deny that Gender Identity exists? If that's the case then why do they assume it does? Regardless, they use Gender Dypshoria as a case for a gender identity, rather than Gender Euphoria. This is reductive as it does not take into account of transgender people that do not feel gender dysphoria. They state that because gender identity is not innate, they can create an "innate" identity. Except not everyone who experiences changes in gender identity is genderfluid, or wants to be called genderfluid. Someone may have be transgender female, but soon become a non-binary person with transfeminine tendencies, and they feel closer to it than what they were before. Genderfluid is better reserved for those who prefer or feel changes in their gender identity. There is no contradiction here, rather ignorance. And then they speak of the idea that everybody has a gender identity despite someone not having a gender. It sounds counter-intuitive, but someone lacking a gender identity is a gender identity. There is nothing that contradicts it. For example, 0 is a number, despite representing nothing. We can add with 0, subtract with 0 and multiply with 0. It has no value yet is a number. Or a better example, a number which has no real value. let's take $i$ for example, which is the the square root of negative one,

$i={\sqrt {-1}}$

We can add with i, (in this case adding with 1 with $i$),

$1+i$

and subsequently subtract too. We can also also multiply and divide by i, which produces both of these values respectively,

$2\times i=2i$

${\frac {1}{i}}\rightarrow -i$

It is not real, yet we can apply the same things. It does not contradict logic at all despite not being real. In fact it opens a new realm known as complex analysis, which is useful for many branches of mathematics. So we can conclude that without the existence of an agender identity, we may limit our scope of what a gender identity truly is.

Oftentimes, changes in identity are dismissed as corrections of mistakes: “I thought I was gender identity A, but then I realised I was actually gender identity B all along,” thereby invalidating the first identity with the second and resisting any logical deconstruction. A similar argument is used against people who formerly identified as trans but “detransitioned”, either by claiming that they are lying about their past experiences of dysphoria and trans identity, or that they were incorrect or misdiagnosed.

"Changes in identity are corrections of mistakes". The fundamental flaw and blessing of what humans possess is mistakes. It is true that one can be mistaken, but they can never fake it. No one pretends to be transgender. Even if it is not who they realise they are, no one is stopping them from detransitioning. It is only a step closer to the realisation of the true selves. Detransitioners get a bad reputation because they are politicised by media. It is part of the transphobia. If people detransition to get a step closer to their true selves, I respect that. But it doesn't mean that they get to indulge in transphobia and not respect other people. Note that a study suggests that only 1% of people regret Sexual Reassignment Surgery (n=7928). In contrast 18% of people regret Knee Replacement Surgery. Therefore there is a reason we must treat certain detransitioners with suspicion. It doesn't mean everyone will be treated as such.

Indeed, gender identity can be quite separate from dysphoria and even transition, in the sense that three different trans women, although all experiencing dysphoria and at the same stage of transition, may hold mutually incompatible “gender essence”, “gender as performance”, and “sex-materialist” conceptions of themselves. Either they have always been women, they became women after transitioning, or they are men who live as women, rather than women in a literal sense. These three conceptions do exist side by side among trans people and can change over a person’s life. Unfortunately, ideological disagreements can become extremely hostile, with heretical sex-materialist views usually disregarded as the internalised transphobia of “TERF” gender traitors, rather than valid trans experiences.

Gender Identity is separate from transitioning and dysphoria. Transgender people share different experiences from one another. Of course they will not have the same examples as Williams listed. "They have always been women" is the most reasonable explanation, given that they had feelings of doubt about their gender identity. It is also the reason I despise the word transitioning despite using it a lot. The other two statement fall into transmedicalism. The 2nd is the same as what I said before, and for the 3rd is transphobic in of itself. The sex-materialists as Williams calls them, Williams is actively defending these sex-materialists. This is not a transgender experience. This is transphobia.

From then on, Williams seems to go into a rabbit hole and goes into TERF rhetoric. It seems to me as if Williams is showing their true selves, not actually being LGBT supportive. This is why I was skeptical of their position as 'LGBT' because there's a T in LGBT. They are not LGBT. They do not support LGBT people. Maybe they are queer, but they are not supportive of transgender people.

The contradictions between gender identity ideology and sex-materialism are so sharp, that they are currently dividing us along lines of sex, class, LGBT status, and more, with the only beneficiary being the united bourgeoisie. Along the line of sex, feminists have long argued that any differences between men and women beyond our physical bodies are socially constructed and learned, rather than innate, and that there is no objective reality as a male or female mind, or male or female behaviours. Gender identity ideology not only denies these sound feminist principles, it deliberately obscures the relationship between trans women and their maleness, and trans men and their femaleness, which poses problems when discussing and identifying female oppression and misogyny and classifying groups with shared interests and experiences for the purposes of political struggles or safeguarding.

See what I mean, dear reader? They actively denying transgender people! They are nothing more than transphobes! I would finish this essay, but unfortunately I must "critique" (or rather demolish) this paragraph. They state that Radical Feminists and Gender "Ideologues" engage with each other and that only benefits the bourgeoisie. I do not disagree with this. Transgender liberals need to fight against capitalism, as TERFs are only a byproduct of capitalism and its base and superstrucutre. But where Williams gets it wrong is by equating the Gender "Ideologues" with TERFs, as if they are both reactionary! This is no different from equating Nazis to Communists, yet Williams seem happy to do so.

The wording in the next sentence is vague yet telling. "Along the line of sex,", "beyond our physical bodies". It is clear there is a political motive. Is gender a social construct? Absolutely. But this line of thinking makes me realise that Williams could be a gender abolitionist, again, a reactionary position.

Gender identity "ideology" does not deny gender is a social construct. It denies that sex is a material thing, it is also a social construct. They comparate between a male "trans woman" and a "female trans man", both oxymoronic and transphobic. And they conclude that this leads to denial of female oppression. We have discussed this already in regards to the section of Red Fightback, so I will not repeat myself again. But it is clear that misogyny does not have its root in biological 'sex'. It has its roots in private property.

When a woman becomes pregnant, she is unable to work and costs her employer money in the form of lost profits, resulting in a market incentive to hire males over females and reinforcing a subservient economic position for females on the basis of their sex under class society. This is an example of sex-based oppression shared by most females that cannot be overcome while the profit motive remains the decisive factor in employment. Sex-based protections, although insufficient, are meant to end hiring discrimination on the basis of reproductive functions, and can therefore benefit trans men as well. This is one example in which a shared struggle is waged on the basis of sex, and where including trans men in a social and political category with biological men may lead to confusion.

Pregnancy does not explain why women are hired less over men. It does not explain why the housewife is a wife. Private property explains it clearer, rather, women are treated as property. They are not meant to have to occupational roles aside from house roles. This has been clear since the witch trials, where their reproduction organs are owned by the man, and thus they are property. Gender roles decided that women need to be "in the kitchen", or serve roles which require "delicate operation" such as computation, cotton spindling or tailoring, while men are working with other industries such as metallurgy. Sex is not the determinant, rather the discriminant, which from Williams' line of reasoning means you are utilising transphobic arguments.

It is true that sex-based protections are necessary to end discrimination in regards to employment. But it is not necessarily sex that matters but rather reproductive rights. Trans men are men, at the end of the day. It is not genitalia that determines that they are men. Next they state including trans men with "biological" men will lead to confusion. There is nothing wrong with including trans men with cis men. There will be no confusion, only expanding the strict definitions of a man and woman.

Another example is how violence by biological men upon trans men stops being classified as crimes of misogyny, regardless of whether this would help us understand and prevent it. If a trans man is assaulted primarily due to being perceived as a woman, does his/her gender identity make any meaningful difference? Should this really be considered a man-on-man crime? Discussions around single-sex spaces have also been hampered by ideological conflict. If we hold that single-sex spaces are important for women and girls and should be protected, and gender identity does not necessarily impact how one looks, how one is socialised, or how one’s body works, then identity alone should not be a valid enough condition for entry. We can agree this without abandoning the struggle for trans people to be able to participate fully in a society that does not provide well for people who break gender norms.

A trans man who is a victim of a cisgender man is not counted as example of misogyny but misandry instead. Gender oppression exists on both sides. It is women who are noticeably more oppressed, but men are also oppressed from this same gender binary. Toxic masculinity is this phenomenon. To understand this is to understand the true meaning of gender liberation. If a trans man is assaulted, it does not matter whether how the assault should be categorised. It is an assault, end of. Something so simple should be understandable to a 5 year old. Also using his/her isn't a great idea given there exist other pronouns e.g. they/them.

Exclusion of trans women from single-sex women spaces is transphobic on the basis that their "sex" is not alike with one another. Trans women can be victims of assault too. So they deserve the same respect as a cis woman. Identity should be enough, and it should not matter how the person looks. Does this violate single-sex spaces? No, it doesn't. Because single-sex spaces are not supposed to be transphobic to begin with.

Conflating a rejection of gender identity ideology with transphobia also creates class conflict. For various reasons, we as human beings are hardwired to identify the cues that determine a person’s biological sex (although we may sometimes get it wrong). This means that when we adopt a person’s preferred gendered language, we are making the effort to pretend that we don’t see their sex, either out of genuine conviction, social pressure, or tolerance of a person’s core beliefs about their identity and a desire to protect them from discomfort. This may be familiar practice to some, but to working-class people who are used to saying things as they see them, a postmodernist ideology better suited for university gender studies departments is extremely off-putting, and accusations of bigotry will not attract those who reject it.

We are not hardwired to detect someone's gender. We only assume that they are that particular gender based on looks alone. In reality we would never know the gender of a particular person unless if we ask it for ourselves. Next they state that they pretend to tolerate them. This means Williams admits that they are transphobic, which is not surprising to hear at all. Also since the working class people are not used to transgender people, it is a good time to educate them, don't you think? Isn't what Marxism is?

Among gay people, too, gender identity ideology is divisive. For example, Stonewall no longer defines homosexuality as same-sex attraction, but same-gender attraction, with the implication being that either gender identity or expression defines orientation rather than sex. This is untrue. I am a man who dates men, and am not attracted to women, masculine or otherwise, regardless of how they identify. The only exception may be trans men who I perceive as male, but only because sexual attraction is based on perceived sex as well as actual sex, in the same way that a straight man may be attracted to a passing drag queen. This does not deny that gay men can have happy and healthy relationships with trans men, but a lack of attraction to the traits of the opposite sex is part and parcel of the gay and lesbian experience and it is homophobic to imply otherwise.

Whichever gay person thinks a "gender identity ideology" exists is not part of the LGBT community. It is true many people define homosexuality as same-sex attraction, but a transgender lesbian exists. Even if the genitalia are not the same as of a cisgender woman, they can still be lesbians and engage as lesbians, for example. The same case can be for trans men. Not everything about a relationship has to involve sexual interests. Romantic interests can be there too. Hence why same-gender makes more sense given that love itself is a complicated subject.

Next they state it is homophobic to suggest that gay men a lack of attraction to the traits of the opposite sex. It is, but also, are they suggesting that they only date gay men based on genitalia alone? If so, this is rather weird of them to admit that. Regardless, if a trans man has sexual reassignment surgery, would that mean they would date a trans man? Likely not, given that they are transphobic.

The rest of the section is detailing about transmedicalism, and I believe I should spare you, reader, from this unmarxist regurgitation regardless.

Despite being fairly new, an entire culture and language has developed around gender identity ideology, which has rapidly filtered into cultural, educational, and political institutions. “Man”, “woman”, “boy”, and “girl”, no longer have anything to do with sex, but instead refer to self-perception. Ditto for third-person pronouns, which may be swapped as preferred or discarded entirely in favour of “neopronouns” such as “zie, zim, zir”. Words associated with sex are avoided, with “male” and “female” replaced with “assigned male/female at birth” (AMAB/AFAB), terms originally used to describe rare cases of intersex people having their sex “assigned” due to ambiguity, which have now been expanded to include cases where sex is unambiguous and identified correctly, but is undesirable. This has emerged alongside the postmodernist conception that sex doesn’t exist anyway, but is rather a spectrum of individual characteristics which society has gendered for the purposes of oppression.