CW: Transphobia

I’m still learning about Marxism and its views about trans issues, so please let me know if what I’m writing is inappropriate or just wrong.

This past week, the British Supreme Court ruled that the term “woman” in the existing UK Equality Act should be interpreted as only people born biologically female, and that trans women, even those with gender recognition certificates (or GRCs), should be excluded from that definition.

To me, this seemed extremely transphobic of course and something I almost expected from UK’s Supreme Court. However, some time after the ruling, the Communist Party of Britain (CPB) posted this statement where they said they welcomed the ruling, further staying that:

This materialist outcome corroborates our view that “sex” must mean biological sex for the purposes of the Act and any other interpretations would negate its single sex statutory protections.

We reject any notion that the Supreme Court ruling was influenced by, or issued as a result of, a transphobic political climate and note Lord Hodge’s remark when delivering the judgement - that it should not be seen as victory of one side over another.

All of this seemed very transphobic to me and just a bunch of bullshit if I have to be honest. Not only because it’s quite obvious that the current climate in the UK is extremely transphobic, but also because the very transphobic JK Rowling herself both endorsed the CPB over their views on trans issues and gave some £70,000 to the group who made the appeal to the Supreme Court. So the CPB is just plain wrong.

However, as I said at the very beginning, I am still learning. From my understanding, gender is a social construct belonging to the concept of Superstructure and as such it can be influenced. So on one side I can understand the CPB’s will to not want to mix the terms ‘sex’ and ‘gender’.

But trans women DO exist. So why is the CPB celebrating a ruling that specifically excludes trans women and deny them the same protections reserved for those women who were AFAB? Isn’t that just a denial of the material conditions that show us that trans women are real?

If the CPB is consistent with previous ML literature on this and I’m just writing nonsense, I would appreciate some suggestions on what reading I could do about this topic.

Feel free to recommend any author(s), theory or articles that touch on these issues please, as I’d love to read more about them