The term, “transgender liberalism” was coined nearly one decade ago by Nat Raha to describe the liberalist idea that the way towards transgender liberation was through legal transgender rights and protections. It is then, for transgender people under this theory, that we would be subordinate to the capitalist, Western system. I would go further to connect the concept of trans liberalism to the sweeping idea that transgender identity and acceptance must look the same throughout the world, meaning that trans people must be 1.) publicly out, 2.) have pride in their identity, and 3.) be a “good capitalist citizen.”
Many of those on the left, transgender or not, fall into the perils of transgender liberalism: from the love of pride parades, to the cheap fast-fashion pride shirts, to the major LGBT orgs who take funding from the US government and defense companies. As well as this, transgender liberalism ignores the particular hatred and discrimination of marginalized trans people–such as low-income, disabled, black, and especially trans people in the Global South.
In the article “Beyond Queer Liberalism: marginal mobilities and the future of queer politics,” author Fadi Saleh recalls a moment in which two gay activists from Uganda were detained at the Swedish border in 2022 whilst trying to attend World Pride, even though they both held the correct identification and citizenship in Sweden. Saleh notes that not once was this wrongful harm of black queer people mentioned at World Pride, and that the whole event was tinged by Western and white-focused liberalism.
The wrongful detainment of the two activists, and the subsequent silence from the pride event that they were trying to attend is reflective of the larger liberal “pride movement.” Saleh states that pride events like World Pride “consolidate an image of the “good” gay that relies on Western secular ideals and discourses and vilifies certain religious groups, primarily Muslims, as being intrinsically incompatible with queer liberal discourses.”
It can be seen in the way we, in the Western world, talk about queer people in the Global South. We cannot apply the same measurements of “acceptance” to those living in countries in which the culture is not the same as in the US/Western Europe. An attempt to place all queer people under the same lens of acceptance (the liberalist mode of acceptance) simply ignores the wishes and desires of queer people who live outside of the imposed white, able-bodied, atheistic norm.
Another example of my understanding of transgender liberalism comes from Syria. In 2017, the International Revolutionary People’s Guerrilla Forces formed The Queer Insurrection and Liberation Army (TQILA). The political line of TQILA ignores the struggles of many of the queer people in Syria, by not working towards the self-determination of Syrians, but towards a “gender and sexual revolution,” via participation in the “war on terror". In an article published in al-Jazeera about TQILA, author Razan Ghazzawi states, “To suggest that 'gender and sexual revolutions' are being accomplished by joining an authoritarian party participating in the imperial 'war on terror' not only functions as an erasure of other struggles, but also as a colonial rewriting of what the struggle is in Syria.”
The problem with TQILA that is important in the context of transgender liberalism, though, comes from the international queer community’s reaction to the formation of the guerrilla army. It was overwhelmingly positive, ignoring the concerns from transgender people living in Syria, and especially in Rojava. This finds itself especially concerning when the international transgender community rarely ever stands with the anti-imperialist resistance within the Global South.
The reasoning for specifically calling out transgender people in the imperial beast is simple: I see very few of my trans siblings engage meaningfully in/with anti-imperialist work, or standing with anti-imperialist Resistance. While our struggle against the hundreds of anti-transgender laws and rise in calls for our elimination are important, so is our work in standing by the Resistance, and heeding the calls for escalation from comrades in Palestine. To ignore their struggles is to spit on the grave of Marsha P Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, who dedicated their lives to intersectional transgender liberation through escalatory means.
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