Fight against all attacks on LGBTQ members of our working-class family
*In South Africa, dozens of lesbians are raped every month, justified by the claim that this will “cure” them.
*While comrades were distributing Red Flag in an auto factory in South Africa, a gay worker wanted to know our position on same sex relationships—will they be legal or will they be banned like in other countries now. (See letter this page.)
*A comrade in Mexico wrote to Red Flag that a fellow worker said that there were no homosexuals where he comes from, and if there were any, the people would kill them.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer persons are our relatives, our friends, our neighbors, our co-workers. An attack against one member of our working-class family is an attack against us all.
Mobilizing the masses for communism involves taking on all the ways that the ruling class has divided us, weakened our unity as a class, kept us from respecting and trusting each other, and kept us fighting amongst ourselves.
Attacks on members of our class family based on their sexual orientation are the result of an ideology of sexism/machismo which is closely tied to gang rape. Groups of men rape vulnerable girls (and sometimes boys) in a group demonstration of their “masculinity.”
Transgender men and women also suffer violent attack. In the US, 29 transgender people were killed in 2017 alone, disproportionately transgender women of color. The cumulative impacts of racism, sexism, and prejudice conspire to deprive them of employment, housing, healthcare and other necessities, making them especially vulnerable.
No more traditions chains shall bind us
Class society controls women’s sexuality to control private property. This enforces strict adherence to male and female gender roles and discriminates against behavior that does not conform to those gender roles. All of us are held back from developing our full humanity by strict gender role definitions.
The Abrahamic religions—Judaism, Christianity and Islam—have historically condemned both male homosexuality and lesbianism as threats to the traditional view of women’s subservience in monogamous families.
Communist society will allow us to have more collective responsibility for each other. Housing and child care arrangements will be more collective. They won’t be tied to the question of “who can have sex with whom.” This is more like the way most people lived in pre-class societies, before the rise of “the family, private property, and the state.”
We will consciously fight the gendered division of labor and the sexist ideas connected to it. Almost all the psychological and social differences we see (or think we see) between men and women come from how capitalism treats us differently and from the sexist ways that capitalism teaches us to see and treat ourselves and other workers.
Once communism destroys the material basis of sexism by putting an end to class society and private property, we’ll be able to win the fight to end all discrimination and divisions based on gender or perceived gender. Communist society will value each person as a comrade within a huge interconnected social network.
Starting now we must fight against the reactionary ideas that we have inherited from class society about gender roles and sexual orientation. This will be more difficult in some places than in others. But lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer members of our class are just that—members of our class. We must not let the bosses’ ideology divide us, nor allow the chains of tradition to keep us from defending our working-class family. We need to mobilize the masses—including the LGBTQ masses—for communism. United we will win!
Autoworker Asks About Homosexuality in Communist Society
I’m Lwazi from Motherwell. I’m an autoworker at Isuzu. A few days ago my comrades and I were distributing the Red Flag inside the factory. As we distribute, we met a guy at the painting department. We gave him the Red Flag and we explained to him why we think it is necessary for the working class to unite regardless of colour and sex.
The guy told us he was gay and wanted to find out whether in this Communist society we want to establish they will have a space to openly choose how they want to love without the fear of being rejected by the society. He wants also to pledge to establish, what is the policy of the movement on this issue. Will same-sex relationships be legal or will it be banned like other countries now?
—A Comrade in South Africa