By the LGBTQ & Women’s Movement Work Team of FRSO
The Freedom Road Socialist Organization stands in solidarity with all trans people seeking justice and liberation on Transgender Day of Visibility. Historically, transgender people have been systematically oppressed in all sectors of society, and publicly transitioning would almost certainly mean the loss of your community, your employment, and possibly even your life.
The Trump Administration wants to bring those days back to the United States. The administration has stated that transgender people do not exist and that the United States will only recognize two sexes. There has been no coordinated fight against this executive order or others on the transgender population from Democratic politicians. Some even applaud or quietly approve of these attacks.
Trump’s attacks on school funding aim to eliminate DEI programming, making it more likely that data about the transgender students and staff will not be collected. After sensationalizing trans women athletes, he wants to eliminate them from sports. Using this scapegoat, he pushes for complete erasure in education and beyond.
The reactionaries who seek to see trans people removed from public life and deprived of every civil rights victory LGBTQ people have won can only be defeated in one way. We must build a mass movement where trans leadership visibly and audaciously challenges the ruling class. And we must unite with all other oppressed people to build a political struggle that all the strength of the United States economic, military, and political power cannot match.
Across the country, members of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization have been leading the struggle for LGBTQ and women’s liberation by fighting back against anti-LGBTQ bills, organizing International Women’s Day Events, and building LGBTQ organizations whenever the possibility arises.
FRSO is involved in fights against crisis pregnancy centers that attempt to manipulate and deceive pregnant women, has organized to take back pride from corporations and police, and has mobilized to protect LGBTQ youth. Transgender Day of Visibility cannot be where our organizing for LGBTQ and trans struggles in particular ends. Whenever repression and rightwing backlash target oppressed peoples, it is the work of real revolutionaries to oppose it anywhere they see it. Our work must unite the struggle for trans liberation to every movement currently fighting for liberation from exploitation, so we can end the rule of the monopoly capitalists and create a socialist system where power belongs to the oppressed, not the exploiters.
