By HASMAESTRI RIVER*
the forefront of revolutiontion of gender identity strongly contributes, in its individualistic autism, to the retreat of advancesos of hard-won civil rights
It was not Damares Alves and the extreme right who invented the “ideology” or the “theory of gender identity” to incite, above all, evangelical people against the left. They just surfed the wave naughty. The “gender identity theory”, created around 1975, logically in the USA, had psychologist John Money [1921-2006] as its forerunner. It spread as a powerful ideological by-product of the liberal tide that swept the world over the last three decades, with the enormous weakening of the world of work.
Due to its disorganizing power in the social movement, “gender identity theory” was strongly supported by imperialism. When the Bill Clinton administrations [1993-2001] bet on the globalization and internationalization of capital, with the consequent abandonment of the US manufacturing worker as a privileged electoral base, identitarianism and the “gender identity theory” became major references of the Democratic Party.
A political-ideological construct born and aimed at the liberal middle classes, identityism (of race, gender, nationality, etc.) contributed to the sinking of the Hillary Clinton candidacy, in 2016, due to the electoral migration of important factions of white workers and blacks toward Donald Trump. Identitarianism returned with the victory of Joe Biden, in 2021. In Brazil, lulo-petismo has also sought, especially with black identityism, to rebuild a new electoral base, after the break of referential ties with the world of work, due to its social-liberal orientation.
reproduction of espécie
Biologically, the human species is divided into two sexes, female and male, determined by the cellular incidence, in women, of the XX chromosome, and, in men, of the XY. This is, needless to say, a strongly dominant pattern, with several statistically marginal deviations – hermaphroditism etc. However, sexual orientation is definitely not a necessary result of biological sexuality, not constituting any deviation from the latter, disease or moral perversion, as it has been and is still proposed.
Men and women can be attracted to the same sex (homosexuality); by both sexes (bisexuality); by either sex (asexuality); by children (pedophilia); by animals (bestialism); by inanimate objects etc. Yet heterosexual attraction is the dominant trend. Circumstances circumstantially determine sexual attraction or not.
The development of humanity depended on the sexual interaction between man and woman. In recent decades, the recognition of the democratic right of individuals to exercise their sexual impulses, whatever they may be, within the limits imposed by respect for the beings and objects of their desires, has advanced, although not generally, with difficulty and with occasional setbacks. . A pedophile should not be discriminated against for his orientation, having the right, commonly denied, to satisfy his sexual inclination in multiple ways, as long as it is not with children – literature, inflatable dolls, etc. [RT, 17/01/2016.]
Tabula rasa
The irrationalist “gender identity theory” challenged this scientific consensus. Simply put, it proposes to ignore the male and female biological sexual duality, replacing it with an original “gender” identity. Apart from the sexual organs, all human beings, at birth, would be fundamentally identical. The differentiation into men/masculine and women/feminine would be due to cultural influences. Sex would be a cultural determination and not a biological one.
Newborns would be a kind of tabula rasa. However, due to cultural tradition, a child born with a penis would have historically been raised as a man, a male being. And the child born with a vagina would have been raised as a woman, a female being. Therefore, children born with a penis or a vagina would have their sexuality essentially determined by upbringing. The gender of the child was dominantly due to culture.
This conception has allowed, in some countries and regions, that parents, who see a dissociation between the sex and gender of their son or daughter, can legally intervene with educational, psychological, medical, surgical measures, etc. to dissociate them from their biological markers of sexuality, penis or vagina, still in childhood and pre-puberty. Medical and other interventions that have resulted, for decades, in serious consequences, resented by children, pre-adolescents and adolescents when adults.
David Reimer's Suicide
David Reimer (1965-2004) was the first and most famous case of sex reassignment. Due to an accident with his penis during circumcision, he was raised as a girl from baby, having his testicles excised and receiving hormone treatment, medical procedures suggested by the aforementioned John Money, who supervised the experienceêance for long years. Around the age of nine, Reiner began to assume himself as a man, undergoing surgical and hormonal repair attempts of his masculinity, with painful physical and psychological sequelae. At age 38, David Reimer committed suicide, having left a previously published account of his adversities with the intention of putting an end to such procedures before adulthood. In which, as we see, it failed.
The “gender identity theory” defends, as we have seen, that parents who see or feel a daughter in the body of a son, or vice versa, can and should implement, generally irreversibly, ablations of sexual organs, hormone treatments, puberty interruptions, etc. In simple words, redirect, with medical, psychic and surgical resources, the sexual orientation of the child, even before he reaches puberty. That is, before he reaches sexual maturity and the age of majority that allow him to decide about his body. Early sex reassignment programs and initiatives are logically supported by the hospital-pharmaceutical complex.
These untimely interventions are eventually defended by parents, adults and public authorities as necessary for the physical and mental health of children without effective capacity to decide about them. Strangely enough, Western communities favorable to the “gender identity theory”, which defend, with Taliban ardor, the right of parents to have their children mutilated, are generally the most fervent critics of the ablation of not only the clitoris, which hundreds of thousands of girls throughout the world still suffer today.
revolutionary imperialismarius
Joe Biden has spoken out harshly against the conservative American governors who are prohibiting interventions in the sexuality of children and adolescents before the age of majority, due to the irreversible nature and serious consequences of these treatments. Prohibitions are commonly accompanied by homophobic and retrograde measures. But they shouldn't complain, those who let the ball stick in the small area! In the 1990s, before the Democratic Party's identity shift, Senator Joe Biden voted against same-sex marriage. [MARIE CLAIRE, 2022.]
The incessant multiplication of currently proposed genders would demand the literal liquidation of the male-female sexual biological binarism. Individuals would be free, therefore, to demand, in addition to the inalienable right to freely practice their sexual orientations, legal recognition as beings who are identical to the gender-sex to which they identify. It is not, therefore, the simple and indisputable right of registration in identity documents to overcome constraints. A transvestite would not only obtain identity registration with a woman's name, he would transform himself into a woman.
A man who, at a given moment, decides to define himself as a woman, should be legally treated as such by the State, assuming as the only differentiation, not necessarily explicit, to be a transgender or trans woman. Therefore, we would have at least two genders of women, transgender or trans and cisgender or cis. In the last classification would be women psychologically and sexually adjusted to their biological determinations, superlatively dominant. The same is happening with men, now divided into trans and cis.
This ideological construction of identities abandons the safe haven of claims for the rights of expression and defense of all sexual orientations, to navigate the seas of absurdity. Adopted in regions of the liberal-imperialist world, its proposals foundered and inevitably founder against the pitfalls of the real world. And, above all, it allows the right and extreme right to take advantage of it to reinforce conservative agitation and intolerance among the general population towards so-called unorthodox communities and sexual practices.
sweet priswill
The real world took care of revealing the absurdities of these proposals. Since 2021, in New Jersey, USA, men, who define themselves as women, have been allowed to serve time in female prisons, with user-friendliness and less harsh regimes compared to men. Demi Minor, the man who defined himself as a woman tranny, sentenced to life imprisonment for murder, demanded and obtained the right to be incarcerated in a cell with two other detainees, whom he became pregnant through consensual intercourse. What led to the end of such practice. [POVO GAZETA, 2023.]
There have been frequent acts of violence against female prisoners, of transsexuals imprisoned in women's prisons, with emphasis on rape. [CATRACA, 2018.] In Brazil, prisoners convicted of rape usually declare themselves homosexuals in order to have the right to the protected space guaranteed to gays. They will be able to opt for women's prisons, if that right is recognized in Brazil, as has been claimed. [DORNELLES, 2020.]
With male athletes defining themselves as trans women, sports federations prohibit them from participating in women's competitions - swimming, cycling, volleyball, basketball, athletics, weightlifting, etc. Decision based on their relative advantages over female athletes. It is the objective biological reality imposing itself on political-ideological daydreams. [CNNBRASIL, 2023.] J. Biden has spoken out against this discrimination.
In mixed competitions, women tend to be harmed due to unequal conformation, in several aspects of female physiology in relation to male physiology – height, strength, speed, etc. The difference between the highest female and male value in weightlifting exceeds one hundred kilos. Feminist leaders have denounced the self-definition of men as women as another masculine intervention-invasion in the feminine space, putting women in a situation of inferiority, of insecurity, diluting specific historical claims to women – maternity, breastfeeding, etc. [DORNELLES, 2020.]
In defense of the familyread
The discursive developments of “gender identity theory” have reached pinnacles of absurdity, such as the proposal that men can also be mothers! Scary proposal! Forgive me my father! I would never trade him for my dear mother! And I don't think my son would accept the same exchange! But no one is frightened, since there is no such danger. This proposal of the “gender identity theory” only tries to disguise in a cunning way the fact that “transgender men” are women biologically equal to all others, if they keep the reproductive system [FLEURITY, sd].
These outlandish formulations allow, as proposed, the extreme right to galvanize and even terrorize, especially the socially and culturally backward population. In general, the conservative right proposes as a goal, for governments that point to the left, the forced and general application of “gender ideology”. In other words, they intend to impose the arbitrary manipulation of the sexuality of newborns and young children, among other diabolical actions. It would thus be an attack on the “family”. And he will argue against this conservative indoctrination, in the context of the dissemination of the revolutionary nonsense of “gender identity theory”, which is supported by the mainstream media.
And, not infrequently, using the denunciation of “gender ideology”, extreme right-wing political and religious sectors gain consensus against the right to exercise and fully express, without restrictions, multiple sexual orientations. They attack the right of marriage, adoption, artistic expression, etc. of homosexual communities. Thus, the vanguard of the gender identity revolution contributes heavily, in its individualistic autism, to the retreat of hard-won civil rights advances.
Supported by the understandable and healthy fear of heterosexual and homosexual parents, grandparents, etc., that their small and pre-pubescent children and grandchildren receive as sexual education the madness of the “gender identity theory” [men giving birth and menstruating; children only of mothers; random selection of sexual orientation, etc.], reactionary politicians manage to block the necessary sex education in public schools. In Florida, sex education and disclosure of “gender identity” has just been banned in public schools, with the exception of information on reproduction. [G1, 19/04/2023.]
idealism and materialism
The origins of “gender identity theory” are multiple and complex, unless I'm mistaken, lacking a structural Marxist critique. Epistemologically, it is part of the historical conflict between idealism and materialism, with the defense of a subjectively determined world, autonomous from the materiality of objective phenomena. A world where individual will and decision build a ghostly materiality. In it, I am what I intend to be. Full stop. Medievalist friend [gay] has wondered whether, in the “theory of gender identity”, there would not be the “influence of Platonism and Christianity in this disrespect” to a body “that would have to adjust to the idea?”
The “gender identity theory” materialized in the entrails of petty-bourgeois liberal factions centered on their sufferings, universalized and projected above and beyond the needs of all who are strangers to them. In this dissolution of the world and its objective social contradictions, my subjectivity materializes as the epicenter of the world, as the alpha and omega of my story, which is born and ends in me.
I rise a meter above the world, lord of speech, transforming myself into a strange Prometheus who warms himself eternally in the fire he produces, unconcerned with the humanity he should enlighten. I constitute myself as a prophet and liberator of my own deified navel. I only associate with an infinity of other self-centered individualities, who mirror and mirror me.
The “gender identity theory” is obsessed with the protagonism that abhors association or identification that scratches my unique empowerment. It ends, therefore, in the embarrassing impossibility of indicating, even with just one letter, the endless singular genres that emerge incessantly in their fanciful speculations, elevated to the status of human nature. Refusing to use the Mandarin alphabet, he adds a + where he should have put a ∞. Currently, the cataloged genres already exceed sixty! All with their own, singular and irreducible program. [ABCNews, 13.02.2014.] The unity of the social world is dissolved by infinite uniqueness.
Political and social function
The conservative political-ideological function of “gender identity theory” is registered when its phantasmagoric claims, typical of the liberal middle classes, occupy the center of left-wing militant activity and of organizations claiming to be Marxist. Thus, the program and the demands of self-centered social segments are consolidated, which ignore and despise the material needs of the working, salaried, marginalized classes, etc., which do not reach them. Dramatic economic and social inadequacies that pathologically compromise all aspects of human existence – physical, subjective, psychic, affective, sexual, etc. Exploited social classes on which depend social emancipation and the tendency to overcome all oppressions, without exceptions.
Factions of the middle classes that experience their oppression, in general without major contradictions, if well situated socially. Throughout the so-called developed world, we have bankers, generals, judges, prime ministers, governors, senators, mayors, trade unionists, etc. male and female homosexuals. In this universe, homosexuality constitutes a marketing niche for capital. [TRAVEL365, 2023.] And the social blemish they eventually come to know constitutes non-class oppression, light years away from class, suffered by workers, wage earners, marginalized people of all genders, an oppression on which capital structurally depends, and cannot live without it. Scientific analysis demands the definition of interdependencies and hierarchy of social phenomena.
The “gender identity theory”, part of the identity cancer, causes enormous political and social damage. Not only in Brazil, it mainly galvanizes young people from the middle classes, especially university students, with an important relative weight in leftist organizations. In general, these organizations, with limited links with the working classes, abandon the difficult objective of organizing themselves by place of work, together with the oppressed. On the contrary, they successfully build “black”, “feminist” collectives, etc., formed mainly by students. Collectives that define their own policies and claims, under the pretext of sectoral autonomy. A reorientation that makes it possible to realize, with the vote of the middle classes, the golden dream of electoralism currently flourishing in the Brazilian Marxist left: elect parliamentarians paid royally by the State.
Revolutionaries that capital likes
A student front of political organization that, at least until recently, assumed itself as Marxist-revolutionary, proposes, for the 59th UNE Congress, a national campaign that defends the “centrality” of the demand for university “quotas” for the “trans population”. That is, privileges on admission to public universities for bisexuals, asexuals, homosexuals and all other LGBTQIAPN+. What makes young males and females said to be semi-lepers Are you there! That student front proposes the whole package of “gender identity theory”. With emphasis on the irresponsible defense of the liberalization of “medical procedures for gender transition” for “children” and the “participation” of men who define themselves as women [“trans women”] “in female sports competitions”. Let's imagine a trans Maguila in a women's boxing competition! [Afront, 2023/07/10.]
This adherence to the “quota” neoliberal agenda covers with a progressive veneer the miserable abandonment of the historic fight for a public university, free and of quality for all, without exceptions. A democratic demand that has as its corollary the nationalization of all private higher education. Possible implementation program, even more so in a rich country like Brazil. However, such a proposal would require the displacement of enormous public resources to satisfy the effective democratization of education. Resources used by current and former governments to satisfy and leverage large, medium and small private interests. Quotas, on the contrary, distribute resources already allocated to the public university, in constant regression in the face of private education, mainly controlled by international capital.
Allow me to add to these considerations the memories and perplexity of someone who was once, in the distant past, a university activist who claimed to be a Marxist-revolutionary. On June 16, 1969, I was arrested, in a night operation, with my companion Sandra Machado, now deceased, by the Military Brigade, which stopped us by firing three shots, fortunately in the air. Our crime: being graffitied with sprays, the modernity of the time, on the walls of the rear entrance of PUC-RS, in addition to the “Rockefeller out”, a conjunctural claim at the time, the demand for the “nationalization of PUC”. She was part of the defense of universal public education by revolutionary student organizations and UNE itself. I spent ten days in prison, we were sued by the Military Court, which asked for two years in prison for me and Sandra. There was no exaggeration in the repression. The struggle for a university for all was proposed by the left feared by the military dictatorship, since it was capable of mobilizing hundreds of thousands of young people. It is up to the current “brave new world”, which literally haunts us, to see militants who claim to be part of the revolution defending the agenda of big capital and imperialism, who are moved to thank, in association with the current Lula-Alckmin government, such claims.
And the ring goes on
The centrality of the world of work and its general and specific claims are sent to the limelight. It skips over the necessary struggle against the classist, patriarchal, sexist, etc. character. of the language. A struggle that expresses deep tendencies of class struggle, latent in popular speech patterns. Questions that the linguist Florence Carboni and I addressed years ago in the book the enslaved language: language, history, power and class struggle. [CARBONI, MAESTRI, 2003.] On the contrary, the proposal of arbitrary and artificial language modifications, strange and opposed to the immense majority of the population, advances as a guideline for the language of “gender”. As a defense of the use, for a more inclusive language, instead of the pronouns “he” and “they”, the new neutral pronouns “elu” and “ile”, among many others.
All this while, out of respect for the evangelical world, a hard fight is not undertaken in defense of the multitudes of poor women crippled, injured and killed due to the criminalization and non-inclusion of abortion in SUS benefits. The claims of the “Theory of Gender Identity” advance with full force, without any effective mobilization for the immediate and unconditional release of the multitudes of women arrested for selling a bundle of marijuana to survive the misery. Liberation of a harmless prison population that terrorizes the middle classes, who meanwhile buy and smoke their joints. Which is, by the way, everyone's right.
Not to mention the true silent genocide of poor transvestites that is practiced with impunity in Brazil, without any real mobilization of the so-called left. Without forgetting, finally, the wage slavery to which, in the present government, as in the previous ones, a huge portion of Brazilian workers, of all imaginable genders, is subjected to the arbitrary enactment of the minimum wage at 1.320 reais, a small portion of its real value. Another mega caress to the world of capital, small, medium, large.[1]
* Mario Maestri is a historian. Author, among other books, of Revolution and counter-revolution in Brazil: 1530-2019 (FCM Culture).
References
ABCNews, 13.02.2014. Here is a list of 58 gender options for Facebook users. https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2014/02/heres-a-list-of-58-gender-options-for-facebook-users
FRONT. Dreaming demands struggle: Face it! goes to the 59th Conune to fight for trans quotas in universities. https://esquerdaonline.com.br/2023/07/10/sonhar-exige-luta-afronte-vai-ao-59o-conune-lutar-pelas-cotas-trans-nas-universidades/
CARBONI, Florence & MAESTRI, Mario. the enslaved language: language, history, power and class struggle. 2 ed. Sao Paulo: Popular Expression, 2003.
CATRACA LIVRE, 2018. Trans rapist is accused of abusing women in prison. https://catracalivre.com.br/cidadania/estupradora-trans-e-accusada-de-abusar-de-mulheres-na-prisao/
CNNBRASIL, 07/04/2023, Athletics Federation bans transgender women in women's competitions. https://www.cnnbrasil.com.br/esportes/federacao-de-atletismo-proibe-mulheres-transgenero-em-competicoes-femininas/
DORNELLES, Tatiana Almeida de Andrade. The Federal Supreme Court and transgenders in female prisons: critical analysis of ADPF 527. ESMPU Scientific Bulletin, Brasilia, a. 19, no. 55, Jan./Dec. 2020. [Available on the internet.]
FLEURITY, sd. Is it possible for a man to get pregnant? Find out what it's like to be pregnant with a trans man. https://loja.fleurity.com.br/blogs/blog/conheca-como-ea-gravidez-de-um-homem-trans.
GAZETA DO POVO, 2023. Trans prisoner gets colleagues pregnant and is transferred in the US. https://www.gazetadopovo.com.br/mundo/breves/prisioneira-trans-engravida-colegas-ee-transferida-nos-eua/
G1, 19/04/2023. Florida bans sex education in state schools https://g1.globo.com/mundo/noticia/2023/04/19/florida-bane-educacao-sexual-em-escolas-do-estado.ghtml
MARIE CLAIRE, 31.03.2022. Biden claims trans people are 'made in the image of God'. https://revistamarieclaire.globo.com/Feminismo/noticia/2022/03/biden-afirma-que-pessoas-trans-sao-feitas-imagem-de-deus.html]
RT, 17/01/2016. Shocking: company creates inflatable girl dolls “to prevent pedophile crimes”. https://noticias.r7.com/internacional/fotos/chocante-empresa-cria-bonecas-de-meninas-inflaveis-para-evitar-crimes-de-pedofilos-18012016
TRAVEL365, LGBT Tourism: Top 5 Gay-Friendly Paesi più del Mondo. https://www.travel365.it/turismo-lgbt-paesi-piu-gay-friendly-del-mondo.htm
Note
[1] We are grateful for the kind reading and comments of the linguist Florence Carboni, the historian PP and the physician GD
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