Introduction

The ruling class, desperate to maintain their grip on power, have a vested interest in keeping the working class divided. They turn the frustrations of the alienated working class in on itself. Inciting national hatred and bigotry amongst the workers. The latest victim, transgender people, have been targeted with great ruthlessness and vitriol in recent years and have routinely been victimized time and time again.

This article seeks to expose a particular assault on the rights of transgender people in South Carolina. However, if you are motivated and willing, we have written very practical steps to fight against this onslaught in South Carolina and across the United States. If you just want practical advice on tactics for how you can protect yourself, and other transgender people, or how you can help transgender people if you yourself are not transgender; please skip to the call to action section at the end of this article.

Pseudo-Scientifically Correct, How To Hide Your Bigotry 44-42-310

HB.4624 defines sex and gender as:


“(1) "Sex" means the biological indication of male and female in the context of reproductive potential or capacity, such as sex chromosomes, naturally occurring sex hormones, gonads, and unambiguous internal and external genitalia present at birth, without regard to an individual's psychological, chosen, or subjective experience of gender. …

(3) "Gender" means the psychological, behavioral, social, and cultural aspects of being male or female.”  …

(5) "Gender transition" means the process in which a person goes from identifying with and living as a gender that corresponds to his or her sex to identifying with and living as a gender different from his or her sex, and may involve social, legal, or physical changes.”
- H. 4624 Section 44-42-310

Yes, sex and gender are different things. Sex refers to biological characteristics such as chromosomes, gonads, and other secondary sexual characteristics. More specifically, sex is a spectrum. Sex has two dominant modes, but has varieties that can happen in each. One dominant mode engenders more testosterone production, testes for gonads, sperm production, and many more characteristics. Another dominant mode engenders more estrogen production, ovaries for gonads, egg production, facilitates pregnancy and birth, and other characteristics. Science wrongly calls these “biological male” and “biological female”, which are incorrect classifications since male and female are already gendered terms, regardless of how closely one tries to shove the word “biological” into the concept. 

The Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Language Project, a group of medical researchers who wish to not only be more transgender inclusive but also inclusive in general in the field of science, suggest terms like “egg donor” and “sperm donor”. Other ideas include “exes and exwys (for XX and XY)”, “XX phenotype and XY phenotype”, and “AMAB/AFAB (assigned male/female at birth)”. However, these are not the only forms sex can take, as there are many possibilities where variations and outright ambiguity can form - which is called intersex. These people have sexual-developmental differences that not only have varying degrees of ambiguity, but also reproductivity. Take for example, women capable of bearing children despite having XY chromosomes. 

Gender refers to how someone identifies, how someone sees and feels about themselves, and how they wish to express it, and how this identity intersects with wider society, and is also influenced by society and culture. However, gender has never really been consistent. See what the Anthropologist Margret Mead found when conducting her studies:

“We found the Arapesh-both men and women-displaying a personality that, out of our historically limited preoccupations, we would call maternal in its parental aspects, and feminine in its sexual aspects. We found men, as well as women, trained to be co-operative, unaggressive, responsive to the needs and demands of others. We found no idea that sex was a powerful driving force either for men or for women. In marked contrast to these attitudes, we found among the Mundugumor that both men and women developed as ruthless, aggressive, positively sexed individuals, with the maternal cherishing aspects of personality at a minimum. Both men and women approximated to a personality type that we in our culture would find only in an undisciplined and very violent male. Neither the Arapesh nor the Mundugumor profit by a contrast between the sexes; the Arapesh ideal is the mild, responsive man married to the mild, responsive woman; the Mundugumor ideal is the violent aggressive man married to the violent aggressive woman. In the third tribe, the Tchambuli, we found a genuine reversal of the sex attitudes of our own culture, with the woman the dominant, impersonal, managing partner, the man the less responsible and the emotionally dependent person. These three situations suggest, then, a very definite conclusion. If those temperamental attitudes which we have traditionally regarded as feminine-such as passivity, responsiveness, and a willingness to cherish children- can so easily be set up as the masculine pattern in one tribe, and in another be outlawed for the majority of women as well as for the majority of men, we no longer have any basis for regarding such aspects of behaviour as sex-linked.”
-Margret Mead, Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies

In modern western day, we now not only have transgender men and women, we also have nonbinary people, two spirit people, and people with xenogenders. To be clear, this does not constitute a marxist break into “postmodernist” thinking that anything and everything “could be true”, despite what some so-called Marxists out there fume in ignorance. What constitutes something in line within scientific reasoning is if 1, it exists, 2, can be measured, and 3,  because it exists it must follow a historical process. 

Firstly, identity clearly exists as a real and measurable thing within the realm of the subject, the mind, just as any idea is real for its influences on human action. In a more literal sense, there is gray matter containing data, and that gray matter then influences the human body to perform based on that data. This isn’t just about gender, but any identity, like “emo”, “American”, “communist” as well as every emotion or sensation as well. These are all products of some calculation done within the brain. What matters is not whether or not a label or features for an identity fits a set definition defined by society, established science, or by conservatives who refuse to adapt their set of beliefs to real facts that make themselves known with any amount of investigation. For example, with people who have a third gender or are two spirit, and this phenomenon being seen all across history and cultures, while conservatives attempt to just pretend it isn’t there. This is why Marxists are materialists while conservatives are idealists who put thought before matter.   

This may be hard to accept for many, as science historically has always given unshakable truths, such as that ‘the sun is the centre of the solar system’ and that childbed fever is directly correlated with doctors not washing their hands before attending a childbirthing patient’. But also these are not facts that have always been known to science, and these facts can only become known through study and observation. Copernicus was only able to discover that the sun was the centre of the solar system after studying the starts with a telescope and marking down his findings. Semmelweis had to study childbirth procedures and perform autopsies to discover that washing hands before childbirth decreases the mortality rate. The same can be said of all phenomena and this too goes for the phenomena of gender.


Secondly, although science is still too far to map with exact precision where concepts exist and how they exist, we understand basic functions of the brain like short and long term memory. Scientists were able to map the parts of the brain responsible for quantity, color, and part of the brain responsible for interpreting symbols into letters.  Scientists were able to recreate images based on brain scans using AI. The way it works is they feed the AI the test images, then have each person look at the images during the brain scan, and feed the data into the AI to recreate the images. Though this does require the original images in the data set, as well as time consuming processing for each new patient. These examples among many others clearly show simple concepts are physical objects. As with more complex concepts, which are built upon the interaction of more simple concepts, such as identity, these too can be measurable within the brain. Additionally, the “gender expression”, or expression in fashion, speech patterns, and behaviors are all byproducts of gender identity, and as such, fashion, speech, and behavior may influence other identities much the same. These behaviors are the parts of the brain responsible for identity acting out in a material sense, which is another way these identities can also be measured.  Because we know then, that transgender gender identities are real, there is no reason you cannot just simply ask a person. Who understands transgender people better than themselves? For who else has to live with all the thoughts, emotions, and struggles that come with being transgender? 

Thirdly, identity has always undergone a process of spreading and redefining itself, and whether or not this is done by a body of people or an individual does not matter. What matters is that we recognize that in order for identity to be created and changed, there is a historical process that engendered its creation. What these transphobes do not understand is that people hundreds of thousands of years ago decided to create social identities correlated to sex, rather than the other way around. Whether a particular idenitity subsequently evolved through several social epochs and modes of production, or a gender was created by someone today simply trying to express who they are, does not matter. What does matter is that these both constitute historical processes because they both have very real and measurable evolutions and direct measurable causes. If anything, the latter is more measurable because it is much more recent, archaeologically speaking. 

In essence, sex refers to a person's biological characteristics while gender refers to an identity that a person has.

The Christofascists are not interested in science at all, except in how they can twist it to mislead people into their own biased presuppositions. SC HB 4624’s definition of sex is fundamentally flawed because of three reasons:

1: The process of science is to develop our conceptual understanding of the world. A term which conflates between two different concepts would clearly benefit from being broken down into two distinct terms” Keeping the term the same is making a grave error in not clearly defining separate phenomena, also making the overall understanding of both concepts more difficult. Making the distinction of “biological male” or “biological female” is doing nothing but attempting to push the two concepts together, that is, the concepts of sex and gender, and in reality shows a vast misunderstanding of the two. As shown earlier, medical professionals have begun to change the language to be more accurate, yet conservatives fail to do so. This is because conservatives are not interested in medical science, they are interested in their old and bygone values which only serve the ruling class of bourgeoisie.

2: A lack of making such a distinction also is grievously harmful to people who wish to not use said labels to describe parts of themselves. It is dysphoric for many transgender women to be called “biological male”, because not only does it encourage harassment and marginalization of people, but also ascribes to them a gendered identity that they do not want, will cause real and unnecessary suffering. 

3: The lack of making such a distinction is sharply done so for the purposes of targeting a group that wishes to alter their sex in a medically proven, safe and effective manner, which, as we shall later see, is clearly the defined goal of the bill.

All 3 show not a real interest in being scientific, but rather in marginalizing people while trying to maintain the archaic lack of distinction in this field. There is no hiding the true intentions of this bill, this is a direct assault on queer rights under the guise of being ‘scientific’ and ‘fair’, hypocritically betraying itself entirely.

Their definitions of gender and sex are also flawed even for use by a mediocre circus, this is because their definitions try to hide from the fact that intersex people are not ontologically the same as endosex people. Their gender definition explicitly reduces gender to being either male or female with no in-between or other options, ignoring the existence of non-binary and two-spirit people. They ultimately cannot imagine gender as being an identity, as to these conservatives your identity is a biological category with predetermined social norms. They see both as a natural process engendered by biology, and see the changing of one's gender as an error, despite there being societies that invert every other aspect except the label! So while the conservatives may claim to care for science, truth, reason, and democracy; they in practice uphold none of these things and fit closer into the biological eugenicists of the 20th century. In reality, they are still confusing biological sex and gender.

Transgender Healthcare for Minors 44-42-330

Section 44-42-320 prevents medical professionals from providing healthcare, including HRT and puberty blockers, to people under the age of 18. Additionally, any treatment that began before August 1st, 2024, if found cutting said treatment would cause harm, would be weaned up until no later than January 31st, 2025. This bill also prohibits genital reassignment surgery to people under the age of 18, and declares that doing so makes physicians “guilty of inflicting great bodily injury upon a child”.

Historically speaking, the supposed “safety of the children” has been used  as a talking point by christofascists, conservatives, and other right-wing reactionaries to harass and vilify minority groups. From falsely claiming that LGBTQAI+ people are pedophiles who seek to groom minors, all the way to claiming that Black people are “super-predators” who will molest your daughters. Not only are these claims based on slanderous hatred and bigotry, but they also end up harming the youths that these fascist elements falsely claim to care about. 

Today, the talking point being used by these reactionaries is that youths are being convinced by transgender people to seek out “dangerous and medically unnecessary” gender reaffirming care that will cause “irreversible damage” to their bodies. Take for instance, the book “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters”, by Abigail Shrier, which erroneously claims that “in most cases—nearly 70 percent— childhood gender dysphoria resolves.” This is of course, in stark contrast to reality, as proven by a five year Dutch study tracking individuals from age 13 to 24, which found that, 

“(98%) [H.M.: of] people who had started gender-affirming medical treatment in adolescence continued to use gender-affirming hormones at follow-up.”
- https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanchi/article/PIIS2352-4642(22)00254-1/abstract#%20 

 
Another study from the United States found that,

 “(8%) of respondents had de-transitioned temporarily or permanently at some point
- https://transequality.org/sites/default/files/docs/usts/USTS-Full-Report-Dec17.pdf 

With the caveat that,

 “The majority of respondents who de-transitioned did so only temporarily, and 62% [H.M: of the 8% who had detransitioned] were currently living full time in a gender different than the one they were thought to be at birth.”
- (ibid) https://transequality.org/sites/default/files/docs/usts/USTS-Full-Report-Dec17.pdf

Additionally, Shrier claims that,

“At best, doctors’ treatments are ineffective; at worst, doctors are administering needless hormonal treatments and irreversible surgeries on patients likely to regret them.”
- Irreversible Damage, by Abigail Shrier

The claim that patients are likely to regret gender-reaffirming care has already been thoroughly refuted here, but the claim that doctors treatments are ineffective is wrong. It also directly ties into the claim that gender-reaffirming care is somehow inflicting great bodily harm on patients.

According to the 2022 United States Transgender Survey Early Insights, of the participants who had at least one Gender Affirming Surgery, 88% reported that they were “a lot more satisfied” after getting a Gender Affirming Surgery, while 9% were “a little more satisfied” with their life. Another Study found that Gender Affirming Surgeries were associated with a 42% reduction in psychological stress and a 44% reduction in suicidal ideation. Gender Affirming Care saves lives.

In regards to the surgeries that Shrier is referring to, they simply are not being done on minors. Conservatives generally like to scream and cry and cope and mald about how the “left” is doing “invasive gender reassignment surgery” on minors when, in fact, no such surgeries are happening. Gender Affirming Surgeries for minors under the age of 18 are not recommended by any major clinical association. For example, the Standards of Care from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health states that,

 “Genital surgery should not be carried out until (i) patients reach the legal age of majority in a given country, and (ii) patients have lived continuously for at least 12 months in the gender role that is congruent with their gender identity. The age threshold should be seen as a minimum criterion and not an indication in and of itself for active intervention.”
-WPATH STANDARDS OF CARE

Furthermore, according to the Human Rights Campaign, minors under 18 generally do not have access to Gender Affirming Surgeries. Exceptions to this are rare, and are specifically for minors between the ages of 16 and 17 of whom gender affirming surgery is declared clinically necessary, have been persistent in their gender identity for years, and who have parental approval.

According to the 2022 United States Transgender Survey Early Insights, 84% of survey participants were “A lot more satisfied” after starting Hormone Therapy; 14% said they were “A little more satisfied.” That is 98% satisfaction overall! Only 1% claimed to be “neither more or less satisfied” after starting Hormone Therapy; less than 1% claimed to be “A little less satisfied” or “A lot less satisfied” combined together. What is an effective treatment if not one that is proven to work, and is proven to improve patient satisfaction and mental health outcomes? It is one that makes even good and necessary treatments look unsafe and primitive in comparison. Like how this one does it to other treatments for medical conditions.

The great medical lie of conservatives, that the majority of transgender youth are confused and will later regret transitioning and de-transition, is thus not only bigoted, but also provably false. It is anti-transgender propaganda aimed at restricting transgender people's access to medical care. A restriction of medical care that is proven to cause severe negative outcomes on mental health and suicide rates. This however, does not stop conservative lawmakers who are complicit in this assault on transgender rights, and do not care if people die.

This law doesn’t only make it illegal to give these surgeries to toddlers, which obviously every rational person would agree is reasonable. The language of the bill makes it explicit that means Gender Reassignment Procedures, of which are now illegal to provide to minors, means:

“puberty-blocking drugs, cross-sex hormones, or genital or nongenital gender reassignment surgery, provided or performed for the purpose of assisting an individual with a physical gender transition.”
- https://www.scstatehouse.gov/sess125_2023-2024/bills/4624.htm 

The Republicans and crypto-fascists are not just targeting surgeries on minors, which in reality are nothing more than a scapegoat for their real agenda; to ban gender affirming care for minors. Because of this law, transgender youths will no longer be able to access the healthcare they need, which is recommended by every study and clinical association in the United States. Because of this law, many transgender youths will face worse health and mental health outcomes. Children will die because of this law, as the suicide rate for transgender youth is well documented to be higher at this point. But these conservatives and fascist provocateurs do not really care about “the children”. They only care about their own interests, pushing kids to be who they want them to be, not who they really are, at the expense of the very children they claim to protect.

Taking Away Transgender Healthcare (for Adults) 44-42-340

Section 44-42-340 prohibits the use of public funds for gender transition procedures, and Section 44-42-350 prohibits the South Carolina Medicaid Program from being used for the same purposes. This restricts access to healthcare to those who could otherwise only get HRT through Medicaid, which includes poor and disabled workers, as well as anyone insured through state employee healthcare plans, which may include teachers, city and state workers, and military personnel. It also prevents institutions who otherwise provided transgender healthcare to no longer be allowed to if they receive state funds for any reason. Ultimately this will force transgender people to resort to self-medication for their transition, and who can blame them given the circumstances?

This is especially heinous and vitriolic as the people most affected by this are going to be the people who need this help the most. Poverty overlaps with transgender issues. This is in part due to the discrimination they face, the costs of medicine, and the less likely transgender people may be to inherit generational wealth due to disownment. The most poor and vulnerable will be unable to access HRT through official channels, while the wealthiest transgender people, i.e those from the bourgoeisie, will be unaffected. 

Rights of Transgender Students

Section 59-32-36 states that school staff, including teachers, nurses, counselors, principals must not encourage transgender minors to hide their gender, and must expose them to their parents if they are found out. The principal, vice principal, or counselor must notify parents in writing if a transgender minor states their gender is “inconsistent with his or her sex” or requests to use a different pronoun that “does not align with the minor’s sex”. According to the ACLU,

“transgender people are much more likely to be abused by their immediate family based on their gender identity, and high risks of abuse and family rejection mean transgender youth are overrepresented in foster care homes, juvenile detention centers, and homeless shelters”.
- https://www.aclu.org/news/lgbtq-rights/trans-students-should-be-treated-with-dignity-not-outed-by-their-schools 

Because studies show that transgender people have higher risk of abuse and family rejection, the outing of transgender minors to their parents will have the immediate risk of putting them into abusive situations. Conservatives think that by knowing, they can “intervene” and “fix” transgender minors and correct them from having the “wrong idea” about gender.

It should be clear, the oppression of transgender youth and transgender adults are an act of genocide, to cover up their identity, to invalidate it, make it illegal, and censor any books and speech about their existence. This is attempted genocide.

Transphobia is a National & International Problem 

For as terrible as House Bill 4624 is, it is unfortunately only one of many bills being passed across the United States. As of the time of writing this article, 597 anti-transgender bills have been proposed to become law across 43 states, with 42 getting passed. In 2023 there were 604 anti-transgender bills, and with 2024 only half-way through, we are close to exceeding that number. Thus there is a proven and definite trend of anti-transgender legislation being on the rise.

In Japan transgender people are required to undergo sterilization to have their gender be legally recognized. In other words, eugenics. In Russia, Putin signed a law banning gender-affirming-surgeries, hormone replacement therapy, legal sex changes, and revoked the right of transgender people to adopt children. Countries like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kyrgyzstan, Egypt, Indonesia, and more have anti-transgender laws such as criminalizing gender expression, requiring surgeries to get legal recognition, criminalizing sex-reassignment-procedures, or banning legal gender marker changes.

But it goes so much further than just legislation. According to Pew Research Center, Four in Ten Americans still say that society has gone too far in accepting transgender people. Fascists have continued to harass and assault transgender people. Transgender people are four times more likely to be the victim of a violent crime. Furthermore, according to the Williams Institute, in 2022 hate crimes against transgender and gender-nonconforming people increased by 33%. Between 2017 and 2023, 263 transgender and “gender-expansive” people have been outright murdered. On the larger worldwide scale, 320 transgender people were murdered in 2023.

So although we focus on this law in South Carolina, it is but one of many across the United States and the world at large. Struggle against this law is only one piece of the larger struggle. It needs to be understood that the struggle for transgender rights is an international struggle; that most transgender people are workers; that it is in the interests of the ruling class to vilify and demonize transgender people so as to divide the workers. We need to build connections, organizations, and be involved in local community organizing as well as national and international organizing to fight for human rights and dignity for transgender people. The full emancipation of transgender people thus is directly tied to the struggle for socialism.

Call to Action

We at the Red Spectre are committed to fighting against this onslaught on transgender youth and adults. To ignore this issue would be doing a fundamental disservice to the working class, and would be a fundamental betrayal of the LGBTQAI+ workers. With this in mind, we propose the following methods of struggle against transphobia.

The best way to fight the legislative onslaught is to participate in the proceedings, such as speaking and submit writing to house/senate committees, disrupting said committees with a group, and if possible, inconveniencing people in charge of decision making who are pushing for these bigoted laws. Although as communists we understand that parliamentarianism is not the be all and end all of struggle, there is great value in using legal forums as a way to raise awareness of political, economic, and in this case human rights issues in our struggle.

For families of transgender minors now affected by this law, see this excerpt from the Campaign for Southern Equality: 

“Families of transgender youth in South Carolina are now eligible to apply for support from the Southern Trans Youth Emergency Project (STYEP) [H.M: ...] The project helps transgender youth whose access to gender-affirming care has been disrupted by government policies. Through STYEP, families can receive accurate information about H.4624; patient navigation to identify out-of-state gender-affirming care providers; and emergency grants of $500 for immediate needs, including travel, medication, and other logistics. Families can request support at www.southernequality.org/SCResources.”

For those who want to help transgender adults, or are transgender adults themselves, it may be valuable to educate yourself on Do-It-Yourself (DIY) Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT). The crackdown on official avenues of accessing HRT will force many transgender individuals to resort to DIY HRT, as many have been forced to do for decades now.  Click here to educate yourself about safe DIY HRT and the legality of it.

Make sure to support local transgender organizations that help the queer community, regardless of if they are Marxists themselves or not.

In order to fight the outing of transgender kids, the Red Spectre has come up with a tactic to entirely nullify the law. If every kid in the school were to come out as trans, or even just a large enough group of kids, as written, the principal, vice principal, and or counselor has to write a letter to the parents of kids who come out as transgender or request to use a different pronoun. The penalty for this is in section 59-32-80 of the law being amended, which states,

 “Any teacher violating the provisions of this chapter or who refuses to comply with the curriculum prescribed by the school board as provided by this chapter is subject to dismissal.”
- 59-32-80

 
If you’re in a school in South Carolina, get your friends together and organize as many people as you can to come out as transgender, even if they are not actually transgender themselves. This strips validity from the letters and can allow transgender minors to cast doubt to their parents by saying “well everyone did it as a prank”. This will not work if only a few people participate, as such it is necessary to draw upon as much of the student body as possible to participate. With enough people, this effectively allows transgender minors to keep their identity hidden even if they feel they may not be accepted. This also disrupts the system and creates more work for transphobic school staff, under threat of being fired. Lastly, it bypasses the law entirely and makes its intended purpose effectively null, robbing it of the negative impact it may have.

Taking advantage of laws like these and turning them against the ruling class to expose their hypocrisy is a time proven strategy. In 1979 when homosexuality was still classified as an illness in Sweden, Swedish workers claimed they were feeling gay to get out of work. The Swedish government was thus forced to declassify homosexuality as an illness. When in Florida, Ron DeSantis signed a law that allowed for parents to ban books containing LGBTQAI+ content in schools for being “sexually explicit”, LGBTQAI+ activists used the same process to get the bible removed from schools, forcing conservative lawmakers to go back and amend the law to try and keep their religious nonsense in schools.

Next, make sure to talk about these issues and raise awareness. Tell people you know what is going on. Share articles, newspapers, videos, etc. raising awareness of transgender rights issues. In other words, agitate, educate, and then organize. No organization is going to occur if you do not first of all agitate and educate. If you can get a handful of people together, consider organizing a protest in a public place, or volunteering to help the community.

Finally, queer oppression exists across the entire social stratum, not just legislatively, but also across local communities, at home, and even in personal relationships. That's why it is important to build institutions to struggle against not just federal or state legislative oppression, but against all forms of queer oppression in every level of society. This requires the building of dual power, networking, and building ties with communities to address these issues, and use these connections to further agitate for social change at all levels of society. We as Marxist-Leninists have a duty to bring together the working masses to fight all oppression and bring about collective social change to fight for freedom from oppression, to destroy class society, and to destroy the division of the working class that follows from class-based oppression.

Workers of the World Unite!

Image Attribution
Ted Eytan, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons