Attacks on trans rights continue to be central to Right Wing politics across the globe, and now threaten to make their way into government legislation. On 20 November 2024 the New Zealand Ministry of Health, tasked by the government, released an evidence brief and position statement calling for “additional safeguards” to be applied to the prescription of puberty blockers for gender dysphoric youth. The proposal called for “a more precautionary approach”, rhetoric that smacks of the Cass Review, a report commissioned by the NHS in England that led to a ban of puberty blockers to trans youth altogether across the UK. In the US, Trump is pushing an anti-trans agenda, and has already signed an executive order limiting, among other things, access to gender affirming healthcare for trans youth. This life-saving care he calls “child abuse”.
All of these government legislated attacks have one thing in common: the restrictions to gender affirming care do not apply to cisgender children requiring the same medication for conditions such as precocious puberty. Cloaked in “precautionary,” seemingly neutral language, the NZ Ministry of Health’s proposal is part of a much larger wave of gender repression internationally, one that requires closer attention.
International Attacks
The shape of transgender rights across the globe is in a period of flux. For our purposes, it is useful to look at the US and the UK as examples. In the past three years, 22 US states have enacted laws that ban trans youth from receiving gender affirming healthcare, while some have implemented laws that attempt to end legal recognition of trans people altogether. These come in the form of bathroom bans, implementing laws that enforce gender as binary, and restricting trans youth from playing sports. One ban of this sort, in West Virginia, is so disproportionate an attack that it currently affects only one child in the whole state.
On 23 January, newly-inaugurated Donald Trump issued a broad executive order stating that the US government would only recognise two sexes, and removing many protections for transgender people. In one example, passport applications for those wishing to change identity markers are being suspended or withheld altogether, and as of 1 February the US State Department has eliminated all reference to transgender/gender diverse travellers from its website. A page once titled “LGBTQIA+ Travellers” is now only “LGB Travellers”. This is an attempt at complete erasure; and many trans and non-binary people report feeling stuck in the country.
In the UK, the Cass Review has received public criticism from the country’s largest doctors union for its unsubstantiated claims. The review ignores over a hundred studies citing the positive effects of puberty blockers, instead favouring the few that support their transphobic intentions. By claiming an excess of youth are being treated for gender dysphoria the Right is staging gender queerness as a “social contagion” that needs to be wiped out. In reality even before the ban in the UK, the majority of these children were held on an ever-expanding waiting list, with many waiting for so long that they were transferred to the adult queue before they were seen. Many of those less able to wait due to the trauma of their changing bodies have committed suicide. When gender affirming care is restricted, when identities are erased, people die. But the attacks against gender minorities continue.
The new wave of gender repression in Aotearoa
The New Zealand Ministry of Health’s submissions bill on the restriction of puberty blockers needs to be understood in this context. The bill was opened to public submissions, something highly unusual for medical matters, making it clear that there are political motives hidden behind this medical façade. The Right wants to make trans identity a matter of public debate rather than personal choice, and there is a consistent lack of trust in youth and queer people to make decisions about their own bodies.
This isn’t the only attack the government has made on gender diverse and queer people. The coalition agreement between NZ First and National vows to “refocus the curriculum on academic achievement and not ideology, including the removal and replacement of the gender, sexuality, and relationship-based education guidelines”. The real question is not whether ideology will play a role in gender and sexuality education, but whose ideology will shape this education.
The appointment of Simeon Brown as Minister of Health and Stephen Rainbow as Human Rights Commissioner makes the answer clear. Rainbow has previously expressed transphobic views, while Brown has been an anti-abortion advocate since his time as a university student. Both MPs claim their personal views will not affect law. However, Brown’s already have, as he voted against removing abortion from the Crimes Act in 2020. There is a growing tension against not only queer people, but against bodily autonomy and sexual freedom itself.
Why is the Right attacking trans rights?
The anti-trans agenda waged by the Right wing is the thin end of the wedge of oppression that includes misogyny, homophobia, and the overall policing of the body that workers have fought against for decades. The question remains: why are transgender people facing a disproportionate amount of attacks?
Fostering politics on a basis of hate is a quick way to gain power and divide the working class. If we are divided then it is much easier for the ruling class to exploit us. Trangender people face a disproportionate amount of attacks from the far right partly because they are seen by the Right as the most egregious threat to their own gender ideology, and partly because they are a minority. The Right targets minority groups because it is harder for those groups to fight back, while keeping the majority on side through scaremongering. This is why this fight won’t end with transgender people. It affects us all.
As Lisa Leak and Colin Wilson note in Rs21, “there are countless examples of oppressed people being falsely pathologised and ignored by medical hierarchies on exactly this basis – from the classification of homosexuality as a mental disorder, to male obstetricians exposing mothers to mortal danger, to Black patients being deprioritised for pain relief”.
In 2023 Kansas passed a law that attempted to erase trans women by legally defining woman as someone whose body produces ova, reducing women to a biological function and excluding many in the process: postmenopausal women, prepubescent women, women who face reproductive difficulties, intersex women. The human body itself does not align with capitalism’s confines of gender.
These structures of inequality underpin the foundations of capitalism itself and we need to dismantle the whole system to be able to be truly liberated. The capitalist ideology of gender is formed around biological essentialism in order to justify gendered oppression and unequal divisions of labour. Gender diversity challenges this status quo.
Why we need to defend trans rights and gender liberation
The right to bodily autonomy is a basic human tenet. While we know as socialists that no change in government and no legislation will free us from the fundamental oppressions of capitalism, the rights we do have – legal abortion, equal marriage, access to contraception, access to gender affirming healthcare – are fights we have won through collective struggle. These fights are important for us as they strengthen our collective power and give us confidence for future struggles to come.
To fight for trans rights is to fight for the right to our own self actualisation, to have power over our own bodies, and our own lives. For indigenous groups it is a fight to reclaim identities that the violence of colonialism has ripped from them. To win we need to be organised, we need to protest, and we need to do so together. Join the fight. Stand up! Fight back!
Photo caption: Trans rights protest, London, 21 January 2023. Photo credit: Alisdare Hickson.
