The Two Perspectives on Transgender Liberation

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by Sansserifseraphim
Published: 2025-10-20 (last update: 2025-11-25)
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In the history of the transgender question there are primarily two perspectives which have emerged and developed since the late 19th century. Those two views are: Social Pathology or Social Revolution. The social pathology view emerges in its modern form with the development of capitalism and science (specifically sociology, psychology, and eugenics) is it fundamentally rooted in sophistry, the continual questioning of trans existence. The second perspective is social revolution, while prefigured by scientific developments especially in Germany and the early Soviet Unions. It emerges alongside the second wave feminist, civil rights, and gay rights movements of the 20th century. It is generally the view held by the most politically organized members of the trans community, and was developed by organizations like Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries1 and the Worker’s World Party2, events like the Stone Wall Riots, and people like Sylvia Rivera and Leslie Feinberg. The social revolutionary perspective is rooted in science and an understanding of the class and patriarchal roots of trans oppression.

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Social Pathology or Social Revolution

In the history of the transgender struggle there are primarily two perspectives which have emerged and developed since the late 19th century. Those two views are: Social Pathology or Social Revolution. The social pathology view emerges in its modern form with the development of capitalism and science (specifically sociology, psychology, and eugenics) is it fundamentally rooted in sophistry, the continual questioning of trans existence. The second perspective is social revolution, while prefigured by scientific developments especially in Germany and the early Soviet Unions. It emerges alongside the second wave feminist, civil rights, and gay rights movements of the 20th century. It is generally the view held by the most politically organized members of the trans community, and was developed by organizations like Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries and the Worker’s World Party, events like the Stone Wall Riots, and people like Sylvia Rivera and Leslie Feinberg. The social revolutionary perspective is rooted in science and an understanding of the class and patriarchal roots of trans oppression.

Social Pathology

The view of social pathology is rooted in the consolidation of feudalism, patriarchy and the Church’s power in Europe. Leslie Feinberg wrote about this in both ‘Transgender Liberation: A Movement Who’s Time Has Come,” and “Transgender Warriors.” This can be shown in the execution of Joan of Arc, whose refusal to stop wearing men’s clothes was the explicit reason given during the trial, and the practice of performing surgery on intersex infants, which emerged in Medieval Europe and is still continued today. The fundamental philosophy of the social pathology view is sophistry. It is continual questioning of trans existence itself that forms the ideological basis of trans oppression. This shows itself in two common forms: Denying the existence of trans people and/or questioning whether or not people are ‘actually’ transgender. Both of these are sophist positions that are fundamentally based on the erasure of trans subjectivity and personhood, It is founded on the idea that trans people are inherently incorrect about themselves. The underlying assumption being that trans people are lying or mistaken about their identity whether a given person applies this to all trans people or just the ones they don’t like, disagree with, etc. is based on the development of anti-trans movement in a given social context and that persons relationship to it. Because sophistry if their fundamental philosophical weapon. The line between ‘real’ and ‘fake’ trans people is always drawn based on what is politically advantageous and what they can get away with in the face of opposition. In the event of political victory for the anti-trans movement they will inevitably deny the existence of all trans people, regardless of their previous positions. “[in] subjectivism and sophistry the relative is only relative and excludes the absolute.” I call it a philosophical weapon because they are not really sophists they use it to discredit trans people and discard sophistry when it is convenient for them. Throughout the 20th century this perspective was held by fascists and reactionaries, such as the Nazi Party in Germany. It was also the most common medical perspective in the West, This is shown in the burning of research done by the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for Sexual Science) the fact that transgender people were still persecuted in West Germany even after the end of Nazi rule, and the history of abuse against trans people (especially youth) in the Western medical system.

Social Revolution

The social revolutionary view of emerged out of multiple historical developments in the late 19th century and early 20th century. This is reflected in the new attitude towards transsexuality*, sexual orientation, and gender diversity that emerged in Germany during the Weimar Republic with the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft and the World League for Sexual Reform. Progressive (socialist, communist) scientists and health professionals in the early USSR and in Pre-Nazi Germany, such as Magnus Hirshfield, a German SPD member, and Nikolai Samashko, First People’s Commissar of Public Health in the USSR, argued for a reevaluation of sex, gender and sexuality. These figures are not social revolutionaries on the transgender question, and they often resorted to pathologizing and other reactionary tendencies towards trans people, but they represent a transient stage in the development of the social revolutionary perspective because they were some of the first to argue for a material basis of gender diversity and transsexuality which challenges anti-trans sophistry. The discovery and synthesis of sex hormones in the 1930s which followed from the scientific developments of the industrial revolution and the development of capitalism, heightened the contradictions already present in patriarchy. With the existence of both surgical and pharmaceutical interventions that can change ones sex the part of the material foundation of the patriarchal sex/gender system is undermined. In response to this new possibility the political activity and visibility of trans people increased, as opposed to the progressive scientists of the early 1900s, who acted on behalf of trans people, it was trans people organizing themselves into newspapers, mutual aid organizations, and other political organizations that developed the social revolutionary answer to the transgender question.

*By "Transsexuality" I mean not an identity but an adjective referring to the transformation of sex and all of the biological and social processes that it involves.

Social Libertarianism

A less reactionary tendency of the social pathology view, social libertarianism is the view commonly held by liberals, social democrats, much of the left, and some center leaning conservatives. This view generally argues for people to ‘do as they please.’ As opposed to complete denial this view relies on “shame-faced agnosticism,” (to borrow a phrase from Engels). Rather than basing the protection of trans rights on a materialist analysis of gender diversity and transsexuality, it argues for the rights of transgender people on the basis of bourgeois liberty. This leads to a focus on protecting linguistic and aesthetic rights (pronouns, name changes, clothing, etc.) as opposed to changing the material conditions capitalism imposes on transgender people. This view neither fully affirms nor rejects trans existence and therefore stands on uncertain grounds that will inevitably collapse into social pathology or social revolution as contradictions intensify. It tends to be reformist because it relies on changing the existing patriarchal capitalist system to incorporate reforms for trans people rather than changing the system to a socialist one which accepts gender diversity and transsexuality as really existing phenomena and organizes society accordingly.