LGBTQ

Pat Murphy says ( Solidarity 447) Claudia Raven did not give enough serious attention to the feminist concerns raised in relation to potential amendments to the Gender Recognition Act (GRA). This is an attempt to give our discussion some more substance, as well as a response. It is of course not definitive and the debate should continue. But this discussion has been made more urgent by the context of the recent stopping of a meeting on the GRA, and a subsequent protest involving physical confrontation at the rearranged meeting (see page 4 for a statement on this). The first problem with Pat’s...

I thought Claudia Raven’s attempt to navigate the recent discussion around trans rights and women’s rights was far too unquestioning of the dominant left narrative on the issues. A recurrent feature of that narrative is to minimise or dismiss the concerns raised by some feminists as exaggerations, shallow or, worse still, transphobic. I agree that we should be for the freedom to break out of gender roles, including the championing of the rights of transgender people, transsexuals, and transvestites, opposition to discrimination on grounds of gender identity as well as sexuality and for the...

There has been a great deal of debate within the left over the proposed consultation on, and potential changes to the Gender Recognition Act. This was sparked by an article by National Union of Teachers (NUT) Vice President Kiri Tunks in the Morning Star, claiming the changes will undermine the rights of cisgender women. She argues this against her union’s supportive position, which has been reinforced by a statement coordinated by the NUT LGBT group. The changes aim to remove the dehumanising quasi-medical gender recognition process currently in place and replace it with a self-identity...

The presence of the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain (CEMB) on London Pride has caused a politically awful backlash by the left and others. Counterfire commented “Islamophobic placards have no place at Pride”. Socialist Worker state, “a small group of around ten racists also joined the parade with placards attacking Muslims.” This was followed by an official complaint against them by the East London Mosque. Counterfire compared some of the placards carried by the CEMB as “something the EDL or a Nazi would carry... so how were they even allowed on the parade?” What did the placards say? “Fuck...

On 24 June, a group of LGBTQ Jews were asked to leave Chicago’s annual Dyke March. The group, including Laurel Grauer from A Wider Bridge (an NGO that links with LGBTQ organisations in Israel), were approached by a group of activists asking about their intentions in carrying Pride flags with a Star of David imposed on a rainbow. After a conversation ensued between the organisers and those carrying the flags, they were asked to leave due to their “Zionist” and “pro-Israel” views. In their statement, the organisers have not made clear what these “offensive” views are — they could have been views...

PCS, the civil service union, held it′s national conference in Brighton 23-25 May. Workers’ Liberty supporters, organised as part of the left-opposition faction, "Independent Left" within the union were delegates. Going into conference with victories in the NEC and Bargaining Group Executive elections. The industrial landscape the union finds itself in is dire, and the leadership's response to it has been inadequate, but not surprising for a leadership infected with the broad left strategy of fusing with the bureaucracy we’ve had in PCS for the past 16 years. The union, despite those years of...

Chelsea Manning was released from Fort Leavenworth, the maximum security prison on 18 May, after seven years of harassment, brutality and enforced solitary confinement. Manning was sentenced in August 2013 for leaking classified wire cables and military records to WikiLeaks. At the time she was a military intelligence analyst and for slightly bizarre reasons will remain classified as a member of the military for a period after her release. Soon after she was sentenced she went public with the fact she was a transgender woman. The US military continued to hold her in an all-male prison...

Despite international pressure, the detention and torture of suspected gay men by the Chechen government since late March has continued, and more secret concentration-camp style prisons have been discovered. A journalist who helped expose the brutal persecution has gone into hiding after threats from Chechen state officials and Chechen Muslim clerics. Putin and the Kremlin in Russia has been cynically turning a blind eye, and the Russian police have detained LGBT activists campaigning against this on May Day in St. Petersburg. But after international pressure the Kremlin reluctantly opened an...

Over 100 men suspected of being gay have been rounded up and detained by the Chechen authorities, with many tortured and some killed. Chechnya has an authoritarian and extremely repressive state presiding over a deeply homophobic society, but this development is shocking even in this context. Some of the suspected gay men were killed in violent raids, whilst others have been kept in secret “concentration-camp style” prisons, where many have been subjected to electric shocks and violent abuse, with some beaten to death. Very few people are openly gay in Chechnya, and much of the torture aims to...

This is a summary of the AWL's view on what is going on. Homophobia should be driven out of the labour movement. Serious charges of homophobia should be investigated, and disciplinary action taken if they are substantiated. However, in Wallasey no precise charge has been lodged. The official Labour Party report last autumn said only: "The investigation has found that some members have truthfully claimed that homophobic instances occurred during the AGM. Others truthfully said that they were not aware of those instances. It is possible for the events to have occurred without the knowledge of...