LGBTQ

Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual rights

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Drag Queens vs the far right

In recent months, far right mobilisations have grown alarmingly. Patriotic Alternative, which was founded in 2019, has begun to grow, setting up shop in communities around hotels being used to house refugees. Violent protests have taken place outside a number of refugee hotels, starting with a riot in Knowsley in mid February, and anti-fascist presence has been patchy. While Patriotic Alternative have primarily targeted migrants, they have also engaged in an opportunistic campaign against trans people and drag performers, making use of the toxic atmosphere on the issue. On Saturday 11 February...

One year on: Ukraine's feminists and left still fighting

Michael Baker spoke with Olenka and Brie, two activists from the Ukrainian socialist organisation Sotsialny Rukh (Social Movement), about how the war is affecting the struggle for women’s liberation in Ukraine, and how the international feminist movement can help. Olenka and Brie visited the UK for a speaker tour organised by Workers' Liberty, 4-16 March 2023 (more details here ). Published in our socialist feminist magazine Women's Fightback : issue 28, Spring 2023 . Can you both introduce yourselves and Sotsialny Rukh? Brie: . I came to the left in about 2014, when I joined the independent...

The way for safety in and out of jail

Rules barring some trans women from women’s prisons in England and Wales are to come into force this week. Justice Secretary Dominic Raab had already announced in October that trans women with penises or who had committed sexual offences would not be allowed in women’s prisons. This has now been extended to cover trans women who had been convicted of a violent offence. “We want to have a liberal, sensitive, tolerant approach to the LGBT community as a whole and in particular the trans community who suffer a lot in this country and have high levels of challenges,” Raab told Sky News’ Sophy...

“My life changed 180 degrees”

Loretta Marie Perera talks with anti-war Russians, one year later February 24, 2022 needs no introduction. We’re now into the second year of Russia’s war against Ukraine, with no sign of it stopping. While 700,000 is the general estimate for Russians who have left the country since the start of the war, with a large spike following mobilisation in September 2022, other sources cite as many as four million leaving the country in the first few months of 2022 alone — countries such as Georgia and Armenia saw as many as 4.5 times the number of arriving Russian citizens as the year before. A year...

Socialism goes beyond liberalism, not falls behind it

On 11 February Brianna Ghey, a teenage trans girl from Warrington, was found dying from stab wounds on a path in a park on a sunny afternoon. Vigils have been held across the UK and Ireland in the days following her death as the trans community and allies came together to remember her. In this context it's particularly grim for Counterfire to publish an article ( 13 February ) polemicising against the left for our alleged "liberal individualist" support for trans rights. The article, Liberalism’s hegemony over the left, runs through some socially conservative Counterfire concerns. Its author...

Anti-LGBTQ culture war in USA, and a fightback

Before the commencement of the 2023 US state legislative session, state senators across the US submitted 299 separate anti-LGBTQ bills to their state houses. According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), across different states these share many common themes: banning “adult cabaret performances” in public spaces, restricting classroom discussion of sex and gender, and attacking the rights of transgender children, ranging from their rights to play sport, through to banning their access to necessary gender-affirming healthcare. If passed as law, some of these bills would see physicians...

Lesbian life in the section 28 era

Georgia Oakley’s riveting and impressive debut, Blue Jean , is both moving and apposite. Jean, excellently performed by Rosy McEwen, struggles to navigate a double life. In her new job as a PE teacher in 1988 Newcastle, Jean is a newly-divorced and reserved individual, always making excuses to not socialise with her co-workers. She’s fretfully anxious to keep work life apart from her other life with her new girlfriend Viv, and other boisterous, more openly lesbian friends. But in 1988, set against the backdrop of the AIDS crisis, a moral panic against homosexuality is being whipped up as the...

Labour trans rights Zoom meeting

Around 20 people participated in the online "crisis call" organised by "Labour for Trans Rights" on 3 February. Most Labour MPs abstained on the Tories anti-trans wielding of Section 35, and Keir Starmer has opposed 16-year-olds legally changing gender. L4TR is distinct from the (long-dormant) "Labour Campaign for Trans Rights" . The meeting felt like an inaugural public meeting. We discussed issues without yet collectively agreeing on concrete plans. There was disagreement (in emphasis) between those favouring a bureaucratic approach, and those more democratically-orientated. The former...

Transphobia and the real issues on prisons

The case of the trans prisoner Isla Bryson has led to an outcry from transphobes, as she was initially housed in a female jail. She transitioned during her trial, and was convicted of two rapes. The outcry came shortly after the Scottish government’s reforms to allow for a quicker legal-gender recognition process based on self-identification, and the Tory government’s move to block those reforms; but gender-recognition legal reforms do not shape the decision about where to house Bryson. Prisons in Scotland, as in rest of the UK, have to risk-assess all prisoners when deciding where to house...

Protest for trans rights

Protests for trans rights have swept the UK against the Tories’ veto of Scottish reforms to reduce the extremely high hurdles to trans people obtaining a Gender Recognition Certificate. Protests so far in London, Edinburgh, Leeds, Newcastle, Nottingham, Orkney, Bristol, York, and elsewhere.

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