June 27, 2026
Revolutionary feminism and the battle for trans liberation
Melbourne Radical Women Organizer Debbie Brennan delivered this presentation at a forum on “Liberalism or Liberation? Which Way Forward for the Transgender Movement” organized by Communist Unity on 27 June 2026. View the presentation here.
Trans liberation has been a thorn deep in the side of capitalism since the early 20th century. It grew into a vibrant force in the 1960s, alongside massive resistance on many fronts. The Compton Cafe rebellion in San Francisco sixty years ago and the Stonewall rebellion in New York City three years later were foundational events. In the decades since then, the sheer guts of trans visibility and the unbending militancy of the resistance has kept this movement alive and fighting.
Moves to obliterate trans identity and the movement are getting more and more vicious as capitalism sinks deeper and deeper into crisis. In the U.S., there’s been a surge in anti-trans bills in the last three years, and there’s been an acceleration this year. Just halfway through 2026, nearly 800 anti-trans bills are on the table across the country — 132 of them are national, and more than half are in the areas of education and healthcare. Trans rights are on tenterhooks here, too. Just look at the fallout from the court ruling in favour of trans litigant Roxanne Tickle against TERF online chat CEO Sall Grover. The battle over what defines gender is back in full swing. Not that it’s ever gone away. It’s not so long ago that a vicious far-right campaign closed down the successful, life-saving Safe Schools program.
What we’re really seeing is that capitalism cannot tolerate the existence of trans people. This is what is funding and fueling the onslaught coming from TERF warriors like Grover and far-right politicians like Hanson, religious crusaders like the Australian Christian Lobby and modern-day Nazis.
When we look at the history of human society, we understand what they’re afraid of. The very idea of a static male/female binary is a relatively recent invention. For the majority of human history, transgenderism was regarded as a natural part of life. Many indigenous cultures across the world still carry this legacy — Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Sistergirls and Brotherboys, Navajo Two Spirits, South Asia’s Hijra as just a few examples.
Women were leaders and respected as society’s mainstay; they were organisers of society’s communistic production and cohesion. Gender and sexual fluidity flourished alongside women’s freedom. But the emergence of private property and then classes changed all this. As technology enabled production beyond daily needs, a class emerged that controlled the surplus. Cattle (the main means of production then), goods and labor became commodified, and the collectively produced wealth was privatised. To harness and hoard it, the emerging ruling class had to destroy the matriarchy. “Father right” replaced ”mother right,” and patriarchy enabled a class to expropriate the social wealth and channel it through the father’s line. The institution of monogamy brought women’s reproduction under control for them to breed and raise generations of exploitable labor. We’re still living with the consequences of what Friedrich Engels called the “world-historic defeat of the female sex.”
Eventually capitalism imposed a strict binary of women and men and heterosexuality as the only acceptable sexual practice. Biological determinism and the sexual straightjacket to keep (cis) women breeding an endless supply of labor and caring for it, from cradle to grave — these are the family values of a society that’s controlled by profit. The very existence of trans, queer and intersex people upsets this social/economic arrangement. Without the male/female binary and sexuality in the service of reproduction, the economy would collapse.
Add racism to this picture. It was invented by early capitalists to justify the global pillage they needed to expand and has been indispensable to profit ever since. This puts trans and queer people of color on the front line of resistance — as we saw at Stonewall and we see today.
This is where Pauline Hanson comes in. Her recent Press Club declaration that “transgender ideology” is “subversive” and must be “confronted” and “dismantled” is a call to galvanise the anti-trans forces. The fact that she’s also sexist, racist and anti-worker makes her the darling of big capital right now. She’s the mouthpiece of the capitalist sector that funds her — which is becoming more desperate. It’s the same capital backing reaction in general, from TERFs to Nazis.
So, no to liberalism! The strategy of winning legal/formal equality within this framework is not the path to equality. It’s based on the belief that equality is possible in capitalism. Sure, we need to fight for legal reforms, but knowing from experience that they can be ripped up later — as is being tried with the Sex Discrimination Act. No movement can strap itself to a treadmill of endless struggle, first to win some rights and then to keep what we win.
So, yes, liberation has to be our goal. And what will move it forward is revolutionary feminism — which intersects the struggles of women, trans, queer and people of color that are founded in class conflict. Nothing short of socialist revolution, which overthrows private property and its patriarchal buttress, and which moves on to build a society based on socialised wealth and workers power, equality and cooperation, will liberate us. A revolutionary feminist, working-class liberation movement will unite and take us to this path.
The big question right now is: how do we make this movement? We do it by building a united front, which brings together all of us who want trans liberation. We’re familiar with coalitions, but a united front is different. Like a coalition, it’s a collection of divergent organisations coming together around a common goal. What’s different is that (1) these groups democratically decide on principles of agreement, or points of unity; this becomes the basis of the united front’s work, (2) democracy is core, where we respect our political differences while working collaboratively around the agreed principles, and (3) this democracy is respected, and all are accountable for carrying out the decisions. If we’re going to build a working class-led movement, united fronts cannot comprise only the Left; they need to reach out beyond the Left and attract all who are targeted by reaction and ready to fight back. They may not be socialists, yet, but this is a school for revolutionary ideas. How many of us were radicalised by the movements we were involved in? The Left has a critical role, but we cannot look inward — we can’t be sectarian toward our own class.
An example from fairly recent history is the united front that forced a Nazi “bookshop” in Fawkner to close down in 1998. It took 15 months — different groups working collaboratively and involving the local community by producing multi-lingual leaflets, letterboxing all the residents and protesting regularly outside the Nazi fortress that was heavily protected by police.
The trans movement here is tenacious. Its vibrancy and militancy is inspiring. But it can’t do this alone, nor should it. The 5,000 who turned out on Trans Day of Visibility 2023 in miserably cold, rainy Melbourne to answer TERF Posie Parker and her Nazi friends were an inspiring start toward building a powerful force united around trans liberation. Trans, unionist, feminist, First Nation, queer and multi-racial, we were a formidable sight — inspired by strong trans voices from the speakers platform and the sense of our own collective power. With the badass, overwhelmingly young, movement emerging now, we can build on this.
Recommended additional reading: Unpacking Transphobia, Radical Women position statement by Emma Allen