There are a group of talking points going around today that paint communism as an anti LGBTQ+ ideology. When queer people identify ourselves as communists, we’re sometimes ridiculed as naive. We must not have heard about Stalin re-criminalizing homosexuality, or about Cuba putting gays into labor camps, (murdering them in the most exaggerated tellings.)
In fact, most of us are well aware of these things, even if the Cuban labor camps are wildly misrepresented. We’re neither naive nor apologists. Where the Soviet Union, Cuba, and other socialist governments have mistreated queer people, we should rightly recognize the injustices. But framing these injustices as evidence that Communism is an anti LGBTQ+ ideology is foolish at best, or deliberately misleading at worst.
It wasn’t until 1967 that private homosexual acts were decriminalized in the UK for men over the age of 21, while, under Section 28 legislation, it was illegal to “promote homosexuality” in England and Wales until 2003.
Meanwhile, gay sex was explicitly illegal in many US states until 2003, a country where LGBT rights are still under attack today.
None of this makes discrimination against queer people in socialist countries okay. But it does show that there’s nothing uniquely queerphobic about socialist countries. They’ve emerged into a queerphobic world, inherited its baggage, and have fought internal struggles about LGBT rights, just like capitalist countries.
What about communist ideology though? Is there anything in Marxist theory that advocates for the suppression or subjugation of queer people?
The answer is an emphatic no.
Far from seeking to suppress queer identities or treat queer people as second class citizens, queer liberation is a goal of almost all communists. In fact, all well informed Marxists view the fight for queer liberation as central to achieving communism. Communism is defined as a classless, stateless, and moneyless society – and it’s impossible to have a classless society when you have oppressed minority groups.
If you pay attention to where attacks on LGBT rights are coming from, it’s not the radical left. In the US, the overwhelming majority of attacks come from the right and far right. They seek to limit trans access to healthcare, spread myths about trans women being sexual predators, and to cast teachers as sexual predators for discussing sexual orientation or gender identity with children.
In the UK, even a good portion of the liberal centre are on the attack. The Mumsnet forum, favourite hangout of many affluent women, is a TERF indoctrination center. Liberal JK Rowling is our very own queen TERF. And Labour politicians are given senior roles despite their rampant transphobia.
Whether these groups and individuals identify as socially conservative or socially progressive, they all have one thing in common: they’re all pro capitalism.
Capitalism requires bigotry in order to exist. Without the majority being divided by manufactured hate and by grievances towards minorities, the masses would focus on the exploitative economic system that’s the real cause of most of their material problems. It’s a system that produces what’s most profitable over what could help the most people; leaves many in poverty while a handful live in luxury; and which keeps us chained to the job for hours so long that it damages our bodies and deprives us of precious time to enjoy life.
Today, the War on Terror has faded into the background, giving Muslim communities a little reprieve from demonization. But the capitalist owned media, politicians, and rightwing thought leaders have only switched targets.
Between 2012 and 2019, British press coverage of transgender people has increased by three and a half times, with the coverage becoming increasingly negative, according to LGBTQ+ children’s charity Mermaids:
“They are described as having a propensity to be offended or be involved in conflicts or trouble in 586 cases in 2018-19 (compared to 8 times in 2012).
“They are described in the context of being demanding or aggressive 334 times in 2018-19 (compared to 5 times in 2012).
“And they are described in the context of crime (either as criminals or victims of crime) 608 times in 2018-19, as opposed to 3 times in 2012.
“There were no references to the trans(gender) lobby in 2012. In contrast, 2018-19 saw 151 mentions of this term, with over 90% of such cases writing about it in a negative way (e.g. as silencing debate, peddling politically-correct fallacies, being deranged or aggressively militant).”
Likewise, rightwing US outlets have also ramped up their attacks on LGBT “groomers” and “predators” who are apparently sexualizing children with “gender ideology.” According to Fox News, trans people even hold all institutional power in the US now and dictate the rules to the oppressed majority – that’s a lot of power for a group who can’t use public bathrooms safely.
Discrimination of this sort is why the LGBT community has been heavily involved in spreading radical socialism over the past 50 years.
Beginning at around the time of the Stonewall Riot, the LGBT community realized that we would have to look outside of the system if we wanted to end our oppression. The queer community created an exciting intellectual culture, studying Marxist ideas through reading groups and by creating print media, and began to understand how those ideas apply to queer liberation.
Campaigning for reforms within the capitalist system, whose masters profit from our oppression, came to be viewed as a band aid rather than a permanent solution. Reforms can be undone fairly easily after all.
That brings us back to communism. Queer communists share the desire of other Marxists to end the economic oppression of working and marginalized people. But the extra oppression we face compared to cishet people makes the need for a new system all the more pressing for us. At its core, that’s what Marxism is about: creating a new social order where no groups or individuals are exploited.
Compare that to capitalism, which seeks to maintain hierarchical economic structures, where the majority works hard and the minority gets paid well. In such hierarchical societies, there are clear incentives to oppress minority groups. For the ruling class, spreading division props up their rule, while it appeals to the white cishet majority by offering them slightly improved conditions, by way of access to better jobs and being immune from police harassment.
Far from being an ideology that oppresses LGBTQ+ people, Marxism is the only route to finally freeing queer people of exploitation and discrimination. That’s why I can’t help laughing when anybody tells me how badly communists treat the gays.
