24/04/2025
Judith Butler, the feminist philosopher, has said that there is no contradiction between being a feminist and supporting transwomen's right to exist. Ms Butler was speaking to the left wing weekly, Socialist Worker, in which she succinctly summarised why anti-trans women had no right to describe themselves as "feminist". Ms Butler said "
If you think of rights-stripping as a form of state repression, on a spectrum with detention and deportation, then you see that authoritarian powers include all three kinds of legal destitution.
This happens at the same time, as you know, that wealth and political power is concentrated among those who are wealthy or are actively seeking to maximize wealth and wealth differentials.
Trans people suffer criminalisation and psychiatric internment, lose access to inter-generational wealth when disowned, and suffer high degrees of discrimination in the workplace and high degrees of exposure to violence in everyday life, unprotected by police forces that too often inflict violence or engage in rights-stripping.
These are material effects of trans life. These effect trans women and trans men, non-binary people as well.
We should stand with all the victims of state violence as a matter of solidarity.
Vulnerable and courageous minorities require the support and solidarity of those who move fervently and rightly want to dismantle forms of state violence bound up with capitalism and nationalism.
https://socialistworker.co.uk/lgbt/judith-butler-its-not-post-modern-to-...
