TransAction: Organizing against capitalism and state violence in San Francisco

Socialist Review, 2001 by Hirschman, Jo

It is Sunday, 25 June 2000. San Francisco s annual Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Parade is making its way down Market Street. As the San Francisco Police Departments (SFPD) contingent Street. As onto the parade route, ready to greet the spectators, fifty transgender and queer police-accountability activists unfurl banners and break into chants. We have strategically positioned ourselves right in front of Chief Lau's car. We march behind a banner emblazoned with the words, "Abusive Cops--Out of Our Parade!" Chief Lau waves cautiously from his car while we chant, "Being a trannie is not a crime! SFPD you are out of line!"

This protest was organized by the San Francisco-based group TransAction to draw attention to the hypocrisy inherent in the SFPD's participation in the parade. The last Sunday of every June, the cops turn out to show their support for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community, but for the other 364 days of the year, they harass and abuse transgender and transsexual people, especially those who are of color and living in low-income neighborhoods.1

In addition to organizing direct actions like the one at this year's parade, TransAction combines community organizing strategies, public education, and smart use of the media to expose the high level of law enforcement abuse against transgender people. We have picketed the local police union, spoken out before the city's Police Commission, organized press conferences, and forged unlikely alliances with a host of other Left social justice organizations.

We are an intergenerational group of male-to-female transsexuals, female-to-male transsexuals, transgender people, and lesbian, gay, and bisexual allies. We are multi-generational, but the median age of our membership is twenty-two. We see ourselves as part of an emerging movement of people who are re-defining gender and creating the next generation of queer activism. I am a co-founder and current member of the group. This article attempts to place our work in a broader political and theoretical framework, and to explore the links between capitalism, white supremacy, male supremacy, homophobia, and transphobia.

When we started TransAction in 1998, most police-accountability activists in the San Francisco Bay Area didn't talk about state violence against transsexuals. At the same time, queer communities were de-radicalizing. ACT-UP, Queer Nation, and the Lesbian Avengers were no longer powerful forces, and mainstream lesbian and gay organizations were pursuing assimilationist agendas that did not leave room for the harsh survival struggles of transgender people and LGBT people of color. TransAction is part of an emerging social movement of transgender activists that challenges the transphobia of lesbian and gay organizations, and the transphobia and homophobia of the broader Left. We are the inheritors of a legacy of queer and transgender activism against state violence and part of a broader anti-capitalist movement struggling for the liberation of all oppressed people.

Postmodernism vs. Marxism?

Based on my on-the-ground experiences of organizing in transgender and other communities, I see some usefulness in postmodern theories of gender, but I turn to Marxism to understand and explain the material realities of life for transgender people. My lived experience teaches me that the process of gender construction is inherently contradictory. We are expected to conform to rigid gender roles - but few people can live up to these expectations. This means that most people experience some anxiety about whether they meet all the criteria to be a "real man" or a "real woman." People are constantly stepping outside impossibly rigid gender norms - whether accidentally or intentionally - and re-defining meanings of "masculinity" and "femininity" in the process.

I agree, therefore, with postmodern theorists who argue that gender is an inherently unstable, category. Indeed, Judith Butler goes so far as to say that gender is "performative" - it is a constantly shifting set of meanings that bears little or no relation to biology.2 I am inspired by the transgender role models -many of whom are influenced by post-- modernism - who express their gender without shame and fear. In My Gender Workbook, Kate Bornstein boldly announces, "In my life, I refuse to obey the rules of gender."3Bornstein and others like her give me the courage to be a dyke who steps outside the gender norms to which women are supposed to adhere.

In my search for an understanding of the workings of gender oppression, I am committed to creating theories that are as complex as people's lives. Oppressed communities are simultaneously battling the forces of capitalism, white supremacy, male supremacy; homophobia, and transphobia. Feminists, racial justice organizers, and LGBT activists have taught Marxists the important lesson dismantling capitalism will not result in the inevitable demise of white supremacy; male supremacy, homophobia, or transphobia. Therefore, we need to create a theory and practice that understands and tackles the multitude of oppressive systems that give power to the few at the expense of the many.