Gender Consciousness and the Internal Revolution

Our essays reflect only their author's point of view. We ask only that they respect our Principles.

← Back to all essays | Author's essays Gender Consciousness and the Internal Revolution

by Local Gay Communist - LGC
Published: 2025-11-28 (last update: 2025-11-28)
5-15 minutes

An attempt at analyzing Gender Consciousness and it's progression from quantitative changes into qualitative shifts.

Author: LGC

Read more

An attempt at analyzing Gender Consciousness and it's progression from quantitative changes into qualitative shifts.

Author: LGC

Foreword

This is a work which I dedicate to all my fellow trans comrades out there, godspeed to all those who read this, those who are aware and those who are not.

Recommended reading before continuing to read this essay: Femboys and the structure of Gender

(Intentionally left blank so others might learn to do the same)

Chapter 1: The initial conditioning

Before we can understand how Gender consciousness is formed presently we must first establish the reality that we live in the present, the fact that we cannot observe an individual phenomenon as anything but existing within the totality from which it was formed, we must understand that gender consciousness may very well be a product of the current, that it can disappear and become irrelevant or even automatic in the future. From this understand then we draw the conclusion that we must first examine the initial conditioning of gender within society. (duly note this is made from a western perspective, and hence will draw from western experience, if the reader is of an agreeable position and has knowledge on non-western gender conditioning, I would highly recommend them to attempt an essay such as this for their own conditions.)

So, what is gender conditioning? To skip semantic boiler plate, gender conditioning is the means by which the superstructure of a given society reproduces that aspect of itself which is associated with gender upon it's constituent people, it is the boy meets girl booklets you get in high school sex-ed, the naming of XY and XX as "male" and "female" in your biology class, the reduction of gender to a simple binary because "diversity is too confusing". It is the extruding of the myth of social pathological gender upon the general population, to uphold it is dastardly, to justify it is bigotry and to accept it is cowardly. It is, put simply, the patriarchy telling you: "there's only a man and a woman and they love each other very much".

We can see the effects of such conditioning in how people think and speak of gender, it is a "personal choice" a "trend of modernity" it "goes against basic biology", It is anything but natural. What these many arguments fail to comprehend (aside from their own stupidity) is that they are all obvious and blatant lies, fed to us from a young age so the bourgeoisie can maximize the amount of kids we pump out to work in their call centers, retail jobs and sweatshops.

Yet, like all things, this conditioning is pregnant with it's own demise, as we will examine henceforth, it is very susceptible to failure, and is dialectically suicidal.

Chapter 2: Baby steps (or: quantitative changes)

So, you're all conditioned up, you've got your boy meets girl pamphlet from school, your biology book spoon-feeding you misleading oversimplifications, and the Shaving cream adverts telling you how to be a real man. But, this is obviously nonsensical, isn't it? I mean, since when does the shaving cream advert get to decide who's a man and who isn't? could it possibly be that by telling you that real men use 3-in-1 motor oil/bug-spray/shaving-cream, they're taking advantage of your compulsion to conform to the social expectations of your assigned gender to make more money? "wait- ", you gasp, "a company? wanting to make more money? that's something I've never considered!" and so we've stumbled upon a very interesting conundrum: who are we to trust in deciding how gender works, if the guys who've been telling us so far have a vested interest in convincing us that gender is a binary, whether that be for the labor force breeding optimization, or the optimization of demographics? Well, for now this question is largely irrelevant, as a real person usually doesn't experience it like this, usually the first steps to understanding gender arise when they realize that they aren't like everyone else. Maybe they were tempted to try on a dress, or pretend to be a dad while playing with a doll house, whatever the initial occurrence, it almost always begins with experimentation, the individual alters aspects of their presentation in private, challenging a socially imposed taboo with a personally held curiosity, they see that the girls do X but they have to Y, or that the guys to Y and they have to do X, and want to see what it would be like to do the other thing.

This is the first way that quantitative change occurs in trans, non-binary and gender-queer people, it's a pretty common starting point and if you ask most trans people they'll probably have some backstory which in hindsight should have been quite the big trans flag for the parents (oh the parents! always blinded by cis-perfectionism!) But philosophically we can understand this as the build up to something bigger, an example of quantitative accumulation which will occur over time in the person, gathering experiences which gradually shake up the ingrained notions of binary, unchanging, natural and perfect cis gender. Eventually the trans individual is left with one question: "who am I?".

Chapter 3: Learning to run (or: qualitative shift in perceived gender identity)

Firstly, we must understand that while gender identity is indeed innate, it is not obvious or apparent to most people, it is obscured by the initial conditioning first and foremost, and that obscurity is further reinforced through social pressures to abide by your assigned gender's secondary aspects. So, what is this thing which we know about? I call it the "perceived gender identity" (I know, very creative naming convention going on here.) It is what we think our gender identity is. Notably, even after the qualitative shift, it doesn't necessarily align with the gender identity perfectly, it's entirely possible to end up with a perceived gender identity which fits well enough, so that you don't really experience any issues with it.

So, how is the perceived gender identity formed? well, originally it is assigned at birth based on outward sex characteristics, and then reinforced throughout life by initial conditioning and further conditioning. But when the contradiction between your gender identity and your sex characteristics is antagonistic, the tendency to question your perceived gender identity will arise, within a trans person this most prominently manifests as gender dysphoria. And once those quantitative changes accumulate, the contradiction will have become so sharp that the shift is unavoidable and you eventually must surrender yourself to and face the reality of being trans. This is broadly what that qualitative shift entails, a long internal struggle followed by a realization, followed by revelations followed by a great understanding of gender, an understanding far beyond what any cis person will likely gain in their entire life. This broad process is also referred to as the internal revolution and it occurs across many different fields, not just gender.

And so our little protagonist has graduated from their shaving cream commercial phase and is now grappling with the question which plagues all trans people at some point: "who am I?" and it comes out to an astounding: "OH WAIT I'M A WOMAN", years of trying on dresses from their mothers closet while alone at home, years of looking at their chest and frowning, years of violently shaving all facial hair away finally make sense, an instant, a cataclysmic big bang of realization, revelation and understanding, sending shock-waves throughout her body, but the battle is not yet won or over, and she must fight on, for it is either transition or death, like for many trans people, the weight of the enforced cis existence has left her with C-PTSD, anxiety and depression and now she has to make progress or fall further into despair, like so many others before and after her.

She is us, the trans experience, and it's quantitative/qualitative changes and shifts, and soon she will attain a higher understanding of gender.

Chapter 4: Gender consciousness

Now that she has had some time to think about it, she starts to deconstruct her initial conditioning, unpacking the stereotypes and ingrained conceptions about gender and sexuality, this is common among trans people, as they are forced to grapple with such concepts due to their existence in a limbo in the cis superstructure. She soon comes to realize the great diversity and complexity of gender, and attains a deep-seated understanding of it which is very different from that of the cis society around her.

This is gender consciousness, it is the being aware of gender in the same way that a class conscious individual is aware of class, it is to comprehend it on a deeper level, far more that the average person will attain through the liberal idealist lens, and seemingly something which cis people seem unable or unwilling to attain. Gender consciousness is the understanding of gender and it's interplays, it's dynamics and it's experience on such a deep level that one's entire world view changes, it is indeed so deep of an understanding that those who abide by the liberal idealist conceptions of gender seem akin to infants learning the alphabet from the perspective of someone with a phd. It is fundamentally irreconcilable with cis ideology, which arises from the lack of gender consciousness and hence can ultimately only ever tolerate trans people as an enigma, containing irreconcilable contradictions which at best we shouldn't question and at worst make all trans people valid targets of the fascist cleansing of society. A great example of this cis ideology and it's existence in the forefront of the fascist mind is to look to Nazi germany, where the first ever book burning held by the NSDAP was not of communist literature, not of Torahs or anti-fascist literature, but rather, it was a book burning of the works held within the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (the institute of sex research)

Conclusion

We now understand a broad timeline of the Quantitative changes which lead to the Qualitative shift and Internal revolution, alongside the failures of cis ideology and the tendency of gender consciousness within the Internal revolution in a dialectical manner.

I hope this piece may someday help others reconcile their internal contradictions and do their own internal revolution.