Recently, the Vatican released a document titled Male and Female He Created Them condemning the LGBT community, in particular transgender people, and reaffirming a cis-heterosexual patriarchal gendered division of labor. Particularly standing out are excerpts which explicitly express such a sentiment, such as when the document says:
The physiological complementarity of male-female sexual difference assures the necessary conditions for procreation. In contrast, only re-course to reproductive technology can allow one of the partners in a relationship of two persons of the same sex to generate offspring, using ‘in vitro’ fertilization and a surrogate mother. However, the use of such technology is not a replacement for natural conception, since it involves the manipulation of human embryos, the fragmentation of parenthood, the instrumentalization and/or commercialization of the human body as well as the reduction of a baby to an object in the hands of science and technology.
The document reaffirms a gendered division of labor which encourages reproductive sex, and, thus, the reproduction of the labor force. Further, the document expresses opposition to artificial methods of reproduction, specifically those which hold the potential to free women from the labor role of reproduction. The document defends the nuclear family, a unit which is part and parcel to the patriarchal gendered division of labor. What would one expect of a reactionary institution, one which has won so much from colonialism. Pope Francis ironically referred to transgender “teachings” as colonialism, something quite amusing to hear from the institution which infamously aided in the imposition of a European gendered division of labor on the colonized world. I will not spend time dealing with the document’s claims that one’s gender or sex is determined by bio-essentialist means, as I have already dealt with such ideas in my other essay on the subject of the gendered division of labor. I will, however, use this document as a starting point in examining the role the gendered division of labor plays in proliferating the oppression of the LGBT community.
The patriarchal gendered division of labor simultaneously constructs men and women as classes, and reproduces the existence of those classes. Both classes are assigned parts in the labor division and its reproduction, with women being expected to hold and exercise the capacity of reproduction, and of domestic labor (which reproduces labor-power), and with men reproducing a patriarchal state of affairs by acting as the main enforcers of the gendered division of labor, carrying said role out through terror and violence. Further, the labor division is imposed in specific and unique forms on colonized nations in order to maintain their productivity for the colonizers and imperialists. Even today, while I have examined the gendered division of labor in depth in my previous essay, I did not examine how this relates to the LGBT community in sufficient detail, though I did examine the question to a degree. Here, I will focus in this facet of the issue.
The LGBT community encompasses people of oppressed sexualities, as well as those whose gender identity differs from that which they were assigned at birth. I will deal with these groups on their own accord, examining specifically their particular relation to the gendered division of labor, and then examine them as a whole.
Lesbians, gay people, and bisexuals are the sexualities of the community who face the repression of those who defend the gendered division of labor. Why? Because they challenge the encouragement of reproductive sex, which the ruling class demands control over in order to ensure the reproduction of the labor force and to wield the power of population control. Lesbians represent an escape from the domination of men in personal relationships in the form of women living in relationships with each other, without a man-woman labor division. Lesbians face brutal terror from the defenders of the labor division, from fetishization as sexual anomalies existing solely to be enjoyed by men, to violent assaults, to corrective rape. Lesbians are punished for their attempts to escape their exploitation by men, and their role in reproductive labor. Gay men represent a slap in the face to men’s traditional labor divisions, as it challenges reproductive sexual relations and sees a man being fornicated with in a position that the gendered division of labor demands a woman be in. Gay men are seen as bastardizing masculinity, as failing to perform their labor functions. They are often punished by other men for their friction with the role of men in the gendered division of labor, facing brutal violence and malicious neglect from the reactionary defenders of the labor division. Bisexuals are attacked for being people who have homosexual attractions and relationships, and face violence on this basis. In particular there is the proliferation of a specific view of bisexuals, especially bisexual women, as sexually loose, willing to have sex with anyone, which is used as a cover to justify sexual abuse and exploitation. Oppression of these sexualities is born of a common feature among them: they challenge the gendered division of labor.
Transgender people face related but simultaneously unique repression from the patriarchal order. Transgender people face the utmost violence and brutality from its defenders, with a high frequency of murder of people in the community constantly looming over their heads. Transgender people represent an utter break from the assigning and enforcing of labor divisions to people, and a choice for gender identity. Transgender people represent a tendency toward the abolition of the gendered division of labor, and so are oppressed with absolute violence, are left to die in the streets, are refused jobs, are refused even entrance into homeless shelters. In particular, transgender people of color, particularly black people, have historically faced extreme violence, as they resist the colonial gender system imposed on them as a means of control by their oppressors. Transgender women face the brunt of this violence, as they represent a major questioning of the role of women in reproduction of the labor force, and are seen as a category of “failed women”. Transgender people face genocide from the patriarchal order for their existence.
As a whole, the LGBT community is bombarded by the wrathful bludgeons of the patriarchal order for transgressing against it. In the US, anti-LGBT hate crimes have been increasing, a result of the desperation of the patriarchal order in its fight for survival. The community, strongly impacted by the AIDS crisis, has been neglected and left to die, with the patriarchal order finding glee in its decimation. The community is excluded from jobs, from social assistance, from the pathways one must go through to attain the means of subsistence. LGBT people of color particularly face the sharpest end of the blade of patriarchal repression, as the historic establishment and maintenance of the European-style gendered division of labor upon them is a major project of colonialism. Those gender identities, roles, and sexualities born within their society pre-colonization being attacked where they defy the European system. Hegemonic society seeks the destruction of the community, in the name of colonization, capitalism, patriarchy, and population control. But the community of those who are out continues to grow and defy the order, and continues to be strong in the face of brutality.
Often, liberal rhetoric around the LGBT community claims that capitalism represents a liberating force for the community, citing the legalization of gay marriage and other victories for the community in Western bourgeois countries. This focus on law rather than material conditions reflects a typical wrongheaded view of law somehow immediately translating to reality. These liberals fail to see that the community still faces poverty, violence, abuse, rejection, and discrimination. Further, these bourgeois states only make concessions to the community as far as there are benefits to be had in it, not because they are fighting the supposed “ignorance” that liberals believe causes anti-LGBT sentiment. With the development of artificial birth, there is slightly more room to be made for the community. As the patriarchal order reconciles the challenges to the labor division in other manners, it can offer some minuscule breathing room to the community, in particular the optics of acceptance and the co-option of the community for profit (such as in the form of pride-themed merchandise). Beyond these hollow displays, the community is still left to suffer in much the same conditions as before. No bourgeois state could effectively deal with the impoverishment of the community as well as a socialist state could, and neither would it be willing to repress the reactionary patriarchal elements which attack the community as the dictatorship of the proletariat could. While, yes, socialist states in the 20th and 21st century have had a poor record with regards to LGBT liberation, this is not something inherent to socialism as much as it is a reflection of the characteristics of the gendered labor division which these countries inherited from the previous modes of production, which influence the policies of the states. This is a failure to challenge the gendered division of labor which we must criticize, and which we socialists must prevent by ensuring LGBT leadership in our parties, in order to avoid domination of leadership by cisgender heterosexuals (especially men), who have a tendency toward reactionary action in defense of the gendered division of labor. Further, said socialist states found their birth as a result of those nations being the weakest link in world imperialism. In all cases, they were countries with a lack of full industrial capitalist development. Thus, traditional patriarchal forces were still in their prime in terms of power. As Lenin wrote in “Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder:
It is a thousand times easier to vanquish the centralized big bourgeoisie than to ‘vanquish’ the millions and millions of small owners; yet they, by their ordinary, everyday, imperceptible, elusive, demoralizing activity, achieve the very results which the bourgeoisie need and which tend to restore the bourgeoisie.
Yes, even after revolution, the forces of the old order persist among the masses. While Lenin is speaking of the masses of the petite-bourgeoisie, the same principle still applies to the forces of patriarchy. In inheriting particularly reactionary conditions, with a lack of the pronounced proletarianization of women common to developed industrial capitalism, the socialist states still had patriarchs and patriarchal social dynamics among them. And, as their leadership tended to be dominated by cisgender heterosexual men, a group who benefit from patriarchy, and whose worldview is strongly shaped by it, there was and is, indeed, a tendency toward reactionary policies directed at the LGBT community, and in some cases reactions following great progress in women’s liberation. This, however, is not inherent to socialism. How can this be combatted? Through encouraging and supporting the leadership of women and the LGBT community in the socialist movement, and through a thoroughly iron repression of patriarchal elements. And I assert, again, that only a socialist state can properly smash patriarchal order through dictatorial proletarian rule, and only a socialist state can fully socialize domestic labor and push forwards in sufficiently rapid development of artificial reproduction.
The liberation of the LGBT community, women’s liberation, and decolonization are directly overlapping struggles, are fights against the same patriarchal order. The LGBT community must be aided by the socialist movement in campaigns against hiring discrimination and discrimination in social assistance, against violence directed at the community. We socialists must further aid in the development of LGBT militia units connected to socialist parties, organized and proliferated for the defense of the community against the forces of reaction. We must demand availability of LGBT-specific medical procedures and treatments, especially gender reaffirmation surgeries for transgender people. While demanding and organizing for all of this, we must also understand that these will only be fully accomplished with the establishment of socialism, with the socialization of the appropriation of production and the dictatorial rule of the proletariat.
I reaffirm that the tendency toward socialist development is a tendency toward the abolition of the gendered division of labor, which in turn a tendency toward the abolition of gender as we know it. This development will culminate in the individualization of what was once gender, no longer being a superstructure of a labor division. We cannot end anti-LGBT violence unless we destroy the patriarchal order which births it. We must fight reaction in all its forms, and defend the LGBT community at all costs. The empowerment of the LGBT community represents a revolution against the gendered division of labor, and a development toward social liberation.
