Groucho Marxism

Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM) was a group of lesbians and gay men who supported the National Union of Mineworkers during the year-long strike of 1984–1985. The Thatcher government had sequestered the funds of the National Union of Mineworkers, meaning that it was pointless for supporters of the strike to send donations to the national union. Instead, support groups in Britain were encouraged to partner with the various mining communities around the country. Three months into the strike, LGSM was established in London and twinned with several miners support groups around Swansea in South Wales. Inspired by the London group a second LGSM group was independently established in Scotland.

The members of LGSM gave their support to the miners from a socialist standpoint and belonged to various political organisations including the Labour Party, Communist Party of Great Britain, Socialist Workers Party, Socialist Organiser and International Marxist Group. The campaign forged alliances between the gay community and labour groups, and proved to be an important turning point in the progression of gay rights in the UK. Miners’ labour groups began to support, endorse, and participate in various gay pride events throughout the UK, including leading London’s Lesbian and Gay Pride parade in 1985. And at the 1985 Labour Party conference, a resolution committing the party to the support of gay rights passed, due to block voting support from the National Union of Mineworkers.

The fight for gay rights in the mid-1980s has much in common with the fight for transgender rights being waged today. The UK was one of the last countries in Europe to introduce legislation allowing transgender people to legally change their gender, with the Gender Recognition Act of 2004. Transgender people are only recognised under UK law as their ‘biological sex’ as assigned at birth, which means that trans women are considered men and trans men are considered women. Transgender people in the UK continue to face significant challenges, including barriers to healthcare, discrimination and prejudice, increased media focus, and widespread opposition to their rights. Gender affirming care is considered difficult to access for adults and is banned for youths.

This state of affairs is not helped by prominent British celebrities, such as JK Rowling, Graham Linehan, and Ricky Gervais, going out of their way to whip up transphobia. The core value uniting all transphobia is a rejection of trans identity and a refusal to acknowledge that it could possibly be real or valid. Transphobes think they know what is really going on inside the heads of transgender people, and that transgender people are either lying or somehow mistaken about their own subjective experience. This attitude is not just supremely arrogant; it is based on a logical fallacy. It is impossible in principle for anyone to know what another person’s subjective experience is like. In philosophical jargon, another person’s subjective experience is ontologically unknowable.

Why do these celebrities dislike trans people so much? What have trans people ever done to them?! In a previous blog post I suggested that transphobia stems partly from the fact that from an early age we are conditioned into thinking that all human beings are neatly partitioned into one of two genders, to the extent that this becomes ingrained in our brains. Suggesting that we don’t need to categorize people in this way feels jarring to many people as it involves shattering this core belief. Still, that doesn’t fully explain why celebrities such as Rowling, Linehan, and Gervais are so horribly transphobic. After all, these are relatively intelligent people who are more than capable of updating their beliefs, as jarring as that may feel.

In another blog post I suggested that Linehan’s transphobia stems from his overly-inflated ego not allowing him to admit that he was wrong and forcing him to dig himself deeper and deeper into a hole. I think the same thing is going on with Rowling and Gervais. It is notable that the careers of all three have followed a similar trajectory: a period of success followed by a longer period of not producing anything of value whatsoever. (Anyone who has had the misfortune to sit through an episode of Gervais’ ill-fated sitcom Derek will know exactly what I am talking about here.) The dignified thing would have been to accept their best days are behind them, take their money and ride off into the sunset. But their puffed-up egos won’t allow this, so instead they resort to spouting transphobic views for attention.

What can we do to stand up to this anti-trans rhetoric? One thing we definitely shouldn’t do is leave trans people to fight this on their own. Here I think we can learn lessons from the striking miners in the 80s. They understood that it wasn’t enough to simply say that you support gay rights; you have to go out and fight for them. It is incumbent on non-transgender people to fight for trans rights – particularly as transphobes are more likely to listen to a non-transgender person. Transphobia stems partly from fear of the unknown, so the more we can talk to transpohobes and help them see the error of their ways, the better. It is only through active solidarity that we will defeat the wave of anti-trans sentiment that is currently engulfing British political discourse.