1 May 2025
On May Day around the world, trade unionists and other workers celebrate the victories of the past and look forward to those of the future. This commemoration has never been only about the workplace, wages and conditions, but a broader struggle against all forms of oppression under capitalism and ultimately a fight against capitalism itself.
Since the first May Day over a century ago, workers the world over have joined together to defend immigrants, fight racist police violence, build international solidarity and oppose predatory imperialist wars. Workers have defended women against unequal representation, unequal earnings and an unequal burden of childraising and household labour, calling for the vote, workplace rights, equal pay, childcare, contraception and abortion. Workers have defended gay and lesbian brothers and sisters from discrimination in the workplace and criminalization of their sexuality. Many of these rights have been won, although many have not—under capitalism none are certain and all gains must be constantly defended.
Today, with the right in ascendancy and social democracy in decline, the bigots who want to channel the working class into traditional family structures to reproduce the workforce have chosen trans and non-binary people as their chief targets.
Globally, trans people suffer from high rates of murder and physical attack. They are discriminated against at work, in education and in public spaces. Vital gender-affirming healthcare, such as puberty blockers, is denied or delayed. They are frequently rejected by family and community, with consequent high rates of homelessness, mental health problems and suicide.
In Britain in mid-April, the Supreme Court ruled that protection against discrimination as women in the Equality Act applies only to “biological women,” thus setting the scene for banning trans women from “women’s spaces” and positioning trans people as something abnormal or “other.” Already there have been copycat attempts, such as a member’s bill proposed by populist Winston Peters, New Zealand’s deputy prime minister.
The new Trump administration in the US has lost no time in attacking trans rights, denying healthcare to trans youth, invalidating passports with a different sex to that assigned at birth, threats to move trans women to men’s prisons, criminalizing teachers for helping trans students, bathroom restrictions and much more. But this is not new—under the previous Democratic administration, 31 anti-trans bills were passed across the country.
Progressive legislation that allows trans people to legally assign their own gender is under threat worldwide, for instance in Germany where self-ID legislation from 2022 is vehemently opposed by the far-right AfD, the second largest party in an unstable parliament. Here, as elsewhere, trans rights may become a bargaining chip in political deals.
There are many other examples. Russia passed legislation in 2023 banning changes of gender, either medically or in official documents. Uganda passed homophobic and transphobic legislation in 2024, including the threat of the death penalty.
Sadly, there are those who endorse transphobic views in the name of women’s rights, as the defence of separate “women’s spaces.” This echoes an ideology that has long run through the feminist movement, that “men” (and all those assigned male at birth) are the problem, rather than the capitalist system and the structures that prop it up, including the nuclear family and assigned gender roles.
When the international working class overthrows capitalism and establishes voluntary federations based on international co-operation and the sharing of resources, household labor and the raising of the next generation will become a responsibility of society as a whole. Humanity will shake off external and internal repression that limits our self-expression and over time will develop new and freer modes of behavior, clothing and body decoration, childraising and expression of sexual desire—in ways that we can barely even imagine today.
In the meantime, it is an important step towards ridding ourselves of capitalism to defend the rights of all to express and identify themselves in a manner of their own choosing. Young trans people see more clearly than many of their peers how capitalism corrupts and limits that self-expression and the potential of humanity, and are willing to participate in its destruction. It is necessary not only to link up the fights on many fronts (against transphobia, racism, genocide, war, low wages and benefits, sub-standard healthcare, etc.) but to organize around a program that explains them in the context of capitalism. This can only be done in the form of a revolutionary party that draws in the best fighters from the trans rights movement, alongside other workers and oppressed. In the process of defending the rights of all, we can build the tool that can free us from capitalism for good.
Related articles
Puberty Blockers and Hormones on Demand! (31 March 2025)
Transphobia & Fascism (1917 No.47)
Trans Equality & the Working Class (1917 No.46)
State Sponsored Transphobia (1917 No.46)