Below are five readings on gender identity politics. Some are recent, others are not so recent. They’re from an eclectic range of sources that take in the Communist Party, Weekly Worker and Spiked as well as those who could be considered as the more ‘usual suspects’ such as Jennifer Bilek and Dr Em. In part, this has been done to demonstrate the breadth of opinion that’s critical of gender identity politics. Unlike a lot of the posts where we feature readings on various issues along with our commentary, we’re going to let the pieces below do the talking…

Corporatism, the New, New Left and the Gender Industry – Jennifer Bilek | Substack | 21.3.23

This fracturing of humanity via the colonization of human sex is how unfettered corporatism functions. It splits everything into smaller and smaller fragments to open markets. Where we once had a single-family physician to help us heal, we now have many specialists to treat everything from lung cancer to toenail fungus. Where we have had a sexually dimorphic species, we now have medical identities that deconstruct sex, being foisted upon us, to open markets.

Why capitalism loves transgenderism – Brendan O’Neil | Spiked | 30.3.23

Transgenderism is every capitalist’s favourite fad right now because they instinctively recognise that it is neoliberalism in drag. It is a hyper-consumerist ideology, with its off-the-shelf identities, which entices the young in particular to treat the self as the only site of radical overhaul and to fiercely police older generations, especially women, who use the ‘wrong’ pronouns or think the ‘wrong’ thought. Capitalists can’t believe their luck.

The Gender Recognition Bill and Equality Law – Communist Party executive committee STATEMENT March 2023

The Communist Party is the only political party with a coherent political analysis of sex and gender. Gender as an ideological construct should not be confused or conflated with the material reality of biological sex. Gender is the vehicle through which misogyny is enacted and normalised. Gender identity ideology is well- suited to the needs of the capitalist class, focusing as it does on individual as opposed to collective rights, enabling and supporting the super-exploitation of women.

For these reasons, the Communist Party rejects gender self-ID as the basis for sex- based entitlements in law to women’s single-sex rights, spaces and facilities. The Party will continue to oppose any proposed legislation – whether at Scottish, Welsh or British level – that seeks to enact such a provision.

A world without gender – Amanda MacLean | Weekley Worker | 14.1.21

Is this new language – and the renaming and breaking up of the category of people formerly known as women – the tool we need for the job of dismantling the worldwide discrimination, exploitation and abuse of women that is so often focussed on the female sexual and reproductive characteristics? I would argue not. These misguided attempts to dismantle the language used to describe women’s bodies and lives does nothing to reveal or dismantle the oppression itself.

The Rainbow Reich: Transgender Ideology and Totalitarianism, Part I – Dr Em | Material Humanism | 10.8.19

Transgenderism is the new way for the Left to expel women from politics and their ranks. Dr Caroline Norma, an expert in Global Studies, Social Science, and Planning at RMIT University, and a member of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women Australia (CATWA), was no platformed for an article she wrote in 2015 warning us of the anti-feminism in Left wing politics. Norma argued that since the 1960s left wing men have wanted to purge uppity women from the parties but would lose face as ‘Overtly denigrating feminists is risky: it can be perceived as misogynistic, and cedes too much political ground on issues lefties like to call their own’.