in the southern cross motel

The trouble with placing gender/sexuality above class is that class interests will difine any movement regardless of intent. The early US Pride movement is instructive here: After the Stonewall riot claimed space for queer identities to be asserted in public, all stratas of the queer communities rushed out to advance their interests. However, contrary to what the gay liberalists would have us think to-day, this did not produce a unified movement, but a deeply divided one--the petty bourgeois white gay men demanded space in mainstream political and professional life, whilst the (lumpen) proletarian racialized trans women demanded housing/job/food securities and an end to police harrasment. Both struggled for hegemony in the movement (c.f., Rivera's "Yall better quiet down" speach), but in the end the petty bourgeoisie used their privilaged class position to secure victory. That is, the class with more material resources, a more respectible appearance, and interests that didn't challenge US imperialism were naturally given more space by the capitalist establishment, whilst the exploited class who had started it all struggled to balance the political fight for a leadership position in the movement with the daily fight for the necessities of life.

A similar dynamic has played out in every social movement, including those for national/racial liberation (c.f., how the Black Panther Party struggled against the petty bourgeois politics of the NAACP, NOI, US Organization, etc. (1) ).

Lenin warned that bourgeois ideology would tend to assert itself in any given movement "for the simple reason that bourgeois ideology is far older in origin than socialist ideology, that it is more fully developed, and that it has at its disposal immeasurably more means of dissemination" (2). This analysis is arguably more true in the US to-day than in Tsarist Russia, and so the it is especially important that we consciously advance a socialist, proletarian perspective wherever we organize. We need a political program that can help the majority of trans women (that is, proletarian and lumpen proletarian trans women), in order to counter the pull towards bougeois assimilationist politics. For example, we should be demanding that petty bourgeois dolls are supporting us in our fight for universal healthcare rather before we support them in their fight to access medicines and surgeries that we can't presently afford. And in this struggle, our immediate allies are the masses of proletarians lack healthcare themselves. This is class interest.

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Palestinian fighters prepare to fire a mortar at israeli positions in the West Bank City of Bethlehem, October 24, 2001.