The 2023 Census is an attempt to cover up and legitimize the queering of sex. By queering we mean making something appear as its opposite, that is the inversion of reality, essence as appearance. Marx used it to denote the essence of labour exploitation appearing as a fair exchange in the market. In the present context, the reality of the homophobic patriarchal family appears as performative forms of its opposite, the liberation of transwomen and transmen from sex oppression. Here, performative means the postmodern idea that if we act out our fantasies, they become part of our self-chosen real-life.
For example, AGP (Autogynephilia – the male fetish of being a woman) is now the license to build back patriarchy better. By this we mean that sex must be abolished and transed away as the sexist homophobic answer to same sex attraction. Lesbian girls are pressured into becoming transmen. Men terrorise them to mutilate their own bodies. Men who cannot get women’s consent for sex (Incels – involuntary celibates who cannot penetrate the ‘cotton ceiling’) are now state licensed to become ‘transwomen’ and lesbians who demand the right to rape real lesbians in state institutions.
The reality of girls transing to escape men, and grown men transing to oppress women has a common cause. Both are the result of a new attack on women, particularly lesbians. Trans ideology in the 21st century is a reactionary throwback to the historic overthrow of women’s control of their reproduction in order to exploit them as sex slaves and break their resistance to the overthrow of patriarchal capitalism.
The modern form of patriarchy is the queering of sex as gender. Gender, men’s oppression of women, is celebrated as a cultural/legal tool to erase women completely. It does not need to repeat the horror of original patriarchal overthrow of women to gain control over their bodies as a force of production. It is worse. It subjects girls and women to self-mutilation and rape to overcome their resistance as a potentially revolutionary force capable of taking back the forces of production and our restore harmony with nature.
So today when capitalism is facing its terminal crisis, women, the sex that has represented the fightback of nature against the patriarchy and parasitic capitalism, must be neutralised and enslaved. To do this the patriarchy re-enacts its historic ritual domination of women to legitimize them as sex slaves. So there arises a new form of patriarchy in the 21st century to complete the job of oppressing women, erasing their existence as a biological sex. They are re-named, re-stereotyped, and re-counted as a gender ‘identity’ open to men as acts of free choice all recorded and validated in the Census!
The Census enables gender ideology and the re-enslavement of women. Gender becomes an independent variable (not dependent on any external social factor) along with age and ethnicity to be used in describing the NZ population. Sex is coded as an ‘identity’ completing the fiction that it is ‘assigned’ at birth as a gender. All the information collected by the Census will therefore be shaped to reflect the delusion that gender, rather than sex, is a determinant of the ‘life chances’ of individuals. By abolishing biological sex, a structural determinant of social life, the fact that capitalist social relations defines ones position in society is replaced by the belief that an act of ‘free will’ can over-ride social determinants as a simple matter of personal choice. Gender oppression is thus rendered as gender freedom.
The ideological denial of biological and sexual social relations in the Census will have a major impact in masking of the reality of 21st century capitalism. The power of women as a biological sex class in playing a key role in leading the working class in the overthrow patriarchal capitalism is critically compromised. In its place are egocentric fantasists whose postmodern denial of reality celebrates a dying capitalism taking humanity to its grave.
Karl Marx and Fred Engels made a path-breaking critique of post-modernism at its very inception in The German Ideologyaround 1847. Their targets were the German bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie, in particular Max Stirner, whose bourgeois radicalism amounted to the belief that individuals are determined, not by biology or society “as it is” but by their own creative imaginations. What matters as real is not the events that shape us behind our backs, that is ‘nothing’, but our ‘self-discoveries’ of our ‘spirit’ or ‘soul’ reflected in the mirror.
The call by Speak Up for Women to #boycottcensus23 is the only response possible for women and men who support them to resist the coding of their oppression as a human right for men in the database of the patriarchal capitalist state.
Dave Brownz is TDBs Guest Marxist, because every left wing blog should have a guest Marxist.
Wow, dude – you’ve been reading too much brit TERF propaganda there. Incels are becoming transfem to get power? Men forcing lesbians to become transmasculine??? This is just patronizing to lesbians and irrational for incels. I don’t have a horse in the race but who gives a fuk if there’s a gender question in the census: I mean ‘trans’ are not going to be ‘taking over’ – it means that there will be a statistic that can be used for planning within out country. Rather ill-timed on the death of Georgina Beyers.
As a long time supporter of Georgina Beyer, and a friend of other transsexuals’ in my youth, I never heard her say that Transwomen are Women.
100% Dave Brown. Thanks for writing!
Wow, that’s even worse than your usual Marxist rubbish. How about you stick to your knitting, metaphorically.
Most Incels believe they are Alpha males (despite having major flaws in their personality, behaviour, wealth & personal grooming habits) and should be dating super-models, not that they want to be more fem. Possibly if they got in touch with their feminine side, learned to respect women & treat them as living, thinking human beings (instead of some pornhub based fantasy), the might not be Incels.
You took rather a long time to get to the point Dave.
All exploited and oppressed people including trans, have the right and necessity to be supported and not attacked or marginalised. But…that does not give license to trans activists to attack women and lesbians which some are doing–it is not a mass movement though so don’t panic just yet.
It reminds of an old internet meme…
“put 100 women and 10 men on a fertile island, in a 100 years there will be a thriving community of Men, women and children. Put 100 trans women and 10 men on the same island and a 100 years later you will find 110 male skeletons”.
Pretty glib comment comrade.
Why is it that a rapidly growing movement which is sexist and homophobic in its attacks on women and children is endorsed by the capitalist state and then given a free pass by self proclaimed Marxists?
Doesn’t that strike you as a contradiction.
Its because both true ideological Marxists and Trans activists are actually insane.
Even more insane is allowing any of them the ability to create laws that affect everyone.
But here we are.
If they are in fact marxists steeped in materialist philosophy and class struggle they should not be giving a free pass–which some of the younger people in particular certainly are doing.
I had trans friends when younger and everyone was just part of the night time scene down town. But I am not so keen on older trans blokes invading women’s spaces and trying to bully lesbians who can be some of the staunchest political allies you will ever work with.
Can you give some examples of trans women (who in living as such are women) & trans men (= men) attacking cis women?
Yeah my daughter was threatened with rape by a couple of transgender women at university.
How disgusting & frightening, sorry to hear that. I would say such behaviour is highly atypical of trans women, though, & more typical of shit-brain arseholes.
with their “girl-d**k” is the sort of threat made.
Some of my Lesbian friends have been berated in public and online just for daring to discuss trans issues, been unfriended and made unwelcome in various forums. Most straight women I know just steer clear because of the corrosive comments.
We all marched for Homosexual Law Reform in the 80s, Civil Unions etc. But I agree with Dave Brown that sections (though he goes further) of the trans rights movement are effectively just extending patriarchal male power and down grading hard fought for women’s rights.
“the trans rights movement are effectively just extending patriarchal male power and down grading hard fought for women’s rights.”
Thanks. In separating trans women from “women” (whether lesbian or straight) you’ve justified the trans responses to your friends, who are highly likely to be of “gender critical”/TERF persuasion.
Putin would be proud.
We had problems before with how we viewed the genders, and sex was caught up in patriarchal/theological morass with puritanism colouring all discussions so that we couldn’t even talk to our own children or teach the details of it. And not to mention passion, and how our nerves and emotions will often draw us in almost involuntarily to intimacy and the sex act.. Now with the clever use of ‘twisted sisters’ and the twisted history of relationships and the often lack of any, we are on the path to the situation in Brave New World of test tube babies and further autocratic controls over natural feelings and behaviours.
Anatoly; Putin is not a Communist – the opposition party in Russia is the Communist Party.
Communism has nothing to do with why Putin would be proud.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/11/25/russia-expanded-gay-propaganda-ban-progresses-toward-law
Big mistake to get caught up in post-modernist jelly-wrestling.
I’ll do you a favour and pretend I never read that.
Oh Dave Brownz, can you tell us how much you *really* resent trans people existing?
The article fails to seperate Trans people from contemporary Trans activism and then takes the applied Queer Theory ideology, (Neomarxism with post-modern tools), and aggressively shoe-horns it into a male/female (oppressor/oppressed) sex-dichotomy. It is grounded in an extreme gender critical take on history to prop up a lazy and simplistic sex-based conflict theory model.
This commits the identical mistake of intersectional activists who imagine similar dichotomies across multiple identity domains thinking themselves intellectually rigorous or more enlightened for doing so.
At the risk of my own over-simplification in Queer Theory the sex/gender-binary is claimed to be a source of oppression therefore liberation comes from de-emphasising even erasing the category of sex. Transgressing the boundaries of gender becomes a liberatory act.
So it is not about men gaining power over women (although opportunistic men certainly will with self-id). Due to domains of supposed privilege and oppression, the intersectional summary could be written as:
Men < Women < Transwomen
Which is a piss-poor way of trying to achieve male dominance.
No, Queer Theory aims to conjure and widen cultural fracture lines to bring about the conditions of revolution. It is a utopian liberatory ideology (something a Marxist should recognise). This political sophistry is leveraging off trans people and using them as a rhetorical human shields with many damaging downstream consequences.
Some consequences are indeed homophobic and misogynistic including redefining homosexuality as "same gender attracted" so lesbians who won't sleep with transwomen are labelled 'transphobic', gender affirming care for gender non-conforming (typically gay) children, allowing transwomen into women's sports, self-id which removes gatekeeping of predatory men who can claim to be trans, allowing multiple rape offenders to be housed in women's prisons.
However, reality alert, This doesn't help trans people either, with self-id transitioning becomes less a long, difficult and very personal journey but an easy political act or signal of social status and clout. This leads to trans people being crowded out by fashionable trans and gender diverse 'tourism'. Most trans people are fully aware of biology too, as you could imagine it can be an acute part of their daily lives. Further they do not cheer or 'feel seen' when a transwoman takes down women in MMA. For decades you would frequently find transwomen in lesbian spaces too, spaces lesbians gate keep themselves. Woke modern discourse does nothing to support this nor I fear long term respect and acceptance.
Most trans people are actually trying to get on with life while woke idiots, and the backlash make it incrementally more difficult.
Yes my comments are anecdotal but attempt to be more nuanced than the intellectual gymnastics above. Woke ideology only supports any notion of patriarchy because via unintended consequences, it tends to usher in exactly the social dynamics it claims to fight against (such as fighting racism with even more racism).
It’s an objective fact that Marxism makes for better health outcomes for everyone. Look at Cuba. Despite the fact that nation was been targeted with economic siege, and that their women were often targets of sex tourism by the likes of Canadians, they kept a very low rate of HIV infection by comparison to other Caribbean nations. Why? Because of Fidel Castro’s enlightened communist policies of public health and HIV/AIDS.
I’m an attack helicopter. What an objectionable presumption the inmates of the Dept of Stats have made. The current gender obsession is a toxic cult fed by mentally ill adolescents who are terminally online and need to touch grass.
It’s the antithesis of the Left wing project to improve the *material* circumstances of the people, because it denies that material reality actually exists! The bullshit ideas some people carry in their heads are apparently more important than the real issues that are crushing the working class.
Forget about the cost of living crisis, here is some juicy news gossip about drag queen story hour. Too bad about Cyclone Gabrielle, Sam Smith is running around in a dress!
The media is gaslighting us with narcissist trolls instead of reporting the crimes of our elite class.
Gender ideology is nothing more than a PR exercise to redirect the valid needs of young people to seek justice and change the world, into something completely non threatening to the capitalist status quo. It is a tissue of lies that mutilates healthy natural bodies, transgresses the boundaries of women and girls, and commoditizes womanhood into a fetish costume, a sick pornified view of women that covers us exploitation and sex slavery under the glamour of “onlyfans” and claims to be “sex positive”.
This rainbow ideology is a shabby front for sex addiction, and certainly not positive for healthy friendships and relationships between the sexes. Its vision for the human person race is a weird mishmash of delusional idealism. irrational transhumanism, and nihilistic self destruction.
Poor fella, you really need a hug xx
Wow.
As a gay man who didn’t do the census because I was uncomfortable with the state asking me what my sexuality was, I’ve definitely had issues with toxic radical trans activists and their blatant homophobia.
However, the idea that all trans people are fetishists and have an agenda is disgusting and dehumanizing. Wtf dude.
Irl trans people are just normal people who just wanna live their lives and will be the first to tell you how toxic online radical activists are crazy.
Extremists of any kind of belief are toxic whether it be TRAs, radical Marxists or radical right wingers.
It’s ok to have questions and disagreements about gender ideology but to call all trans people fetishets is just despicable, disgraceful and disgusting.
I think the attacks on Jk Rowling are disgusting, but guess what she’d be the first to condemn this piece as would many feminists who have issues with gender ideology.
Pieces like this make having a nuanced discussion about gender ideology impossible.
Also you clinging on to your failed 19th century ideology like a fundamentalist Christian is hilarious.
Whatever replaces capitalism won’t be the ideology of a 19th century neck beard who never worked a day in his life, marx a man who never calloused his hands on a factory floor, never sweated, never toiled and his archaic ideology is not going to be the future of the left in a world where ai and automation take all the factory and service jobs.
I don’t know what will replace the despicable era of neoliberalism but you can bet your arse the problems of the future won’t be solved by a 19th century neck beard.
Some ideas from Marx absolutely have merit, but to think in 2023 that Marxism is going to overthrow capitalism is hilarious, it’s as hilarious and faith based as christians who think Jesus is coming back any day now
Ironically, radical trans activists are also 9 times out of 10 radical Marxists and maybe that’s why you’re so mad at them, you don’t want them in your Marxist larping club?
People can have disagreements with gender ideology but to dehumanize all trans people as fetishets is fucking disgusting.
Enjoy staying mad dude. Your impotent rage achieved absolutely nothing.
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