Thread by @authlefttrash, hot take but out of all identities, queer ones have the least [...]

hot take but out of all identities, queer ones have the least correlation to class. this is because unlike race and class, its not hereditary.

how can that be? well, hereditary doesn't actually mean genetic. it means passed down from parent to child, by any means.

class is very very VERY strongly hereditary. children overwhelmingly have the same class as their parents. in fact, the outliers to the trend aren't proles who become bougie, but children of the PB who become proles when recessions hit and their wealth is wiped out.

race originated as a literal class division- "all black people are slaves"- so when slavery was abolished and black americans all became proles by default, because class is hereditary and so is race, there's nearly a one to one correlation with black and indigenous americans.

disability isn't as hereditary (you can become disabled or be born disabled with abled parents) but because of what is disability definitionally IS, unless you are born into fabulous wealth, you will almost certainly become a prole if you weren't already.

this is because in a capitalist society, what counts as a disability is defined by if it impedes your ability to be a "good worker." so needing glasses? not a disability. needing a wheelchair? disability. autism? only a disability if you're "low-functioning," aka *can't work*

if you can't tell, i'm going down the list in order of "most correlated to class" to "least correlated to class." the reason disability isn't higher on the list, despite the fact that it pretty much immediately alienates you from the capitalist class, is just because of nobility.

not only does disability not prevent you from being considered a member of the nobility in the same way it does the capitalist class, because of all the inbreeding there's MORE disability in the noble class.

but again, there are a few exceptions to this rule. for example, if you were already bourgeois and became disabled, if you set yourself up well enough, you can remain bourgeois. and in the same way the poor eyesight impedes working but can be circumvented with glasses-

-if you're born just, RIDICULOUSLY wealthy, then sometimes you can essentially "buy" your way out of the ableism inherent to capitalism by just throwing money at the problem. (think of that ridiculously expensive wheelchair that can travel up stairs.)

but of course, that being said, because disability can be ACQUIRED, it's still strongly correlated with the proletarian class because proles have to endanger their bodies much more than capitalists, and don't have access to the same preventative treatments they do.

which brings me to gender, and boy howdy, that's where things start to get complicated.

like, REALLY complicated.

so, gender isn't hereditary. it's basically a 50/50 coin toss. (i have to gloss over trans/NB ppl for now. we'll get back to that)

regardless of the gender of the parents (remember, whether something is hereditary is not determined by the genetics, but rather the parents!) kids have a 50/50 chance of being male or female. lesbian couples don't raise more girls and gay couples don't raise more boys.

because gender is not at all hereditary, and class is almost entirely hereditary, this means that the same number of women are born into the bourgeois as men.

HOWEVER.

two things are of note here: one, that bourgeois women are encouraged to climb the ranks through marriage-

two, that women in general are encouraged to perform unpaid reproductive labor as a sort of "subclass." i don't mean that woman is the bottom class, but rather that women are encouraged to become a sort of specialized class within a class.

read engles' "on the origin of the family" for a more thorough explanation. however, this subclass of "performing reproductive labor for survival" (i.e. professional housewife with a breadwinner husband) is not universal and has become increasingly less common.

so, good news for women! proletarian women now have to slave away at a wage job for their survival just like proletarian men! of course, this has always been the case for non-white women, but i digress.

the homemaker subclass is practically limited to the capitalist class.

this is why in the past few years we've seen an overwhelming amount of "girlboss" liberal feminism- there's still as SLIGHT correlation to class. bourgeois women who make their living by performing reproductive labor can become proleterianized if they get a divorce.

instead of allying with the proletariat over a shared vector of oppression, however, these bourgeois women seek to elevate themselves to the status of oppressor. become the girlboss ceo, exploit their workers, and hire a nanny to perform reproductive labor for them.

this isn't to say "all feminism is bourgeois" of course. if you haven't caught on, those nannies that white female capitalists hire are not only categorically proletarian and overwhelmingly women themselves, but women of color at that.

this finally, FINALLY, brings us to queer identity and it's relationship to class. good fucking god.

i'm sure you get the hereditary spiel by now. being gay isn't hereditary, and just like gender as a whole isn't hereditary, neither is being transgender.

as i proved earlier, this means that the percentage of queer people born into any given class is constant. but this is where things get tricky, because like disability, queerness doesn't affect your status in nobility or non-bourgeois classes.

we can turn to queer history for this. there's hundreds, if not thousands, of recorded instances of queer kings and queens, lords, ladies, and of course, the Public Universal Friend. (look them up, they're amazing.) in non-christian societies, queer rulers flourished.

not just queer rulers either, but queer members of basically every class- because remember, societies before capitalism had more than two classes. now, the difference is that under some (usually christian) theocracies, where the ruling class is the church, queer people are-

categorically prosecuted as enemies of the church, making them class enemies and creating a class antagonism between the church and queer people. problem is, capitalism isn't a theocracy.

now, remember how i said that bourgeois women essentially constitute a sub-class of the bourgeois? if bougie women are a class with slightly different class interests, then proletariat queers are the opposing sub-class between which class conflict takes place.

"wait but vinny you said that queer people had the LEAST correlation to class!" but i didn't say NO correlation. i believe proletarian queers constitute the class which is in conflict with the bourgoise reproductive labor class (and it's supporters ofc) because they pose a threat

to that sub-system itself. if you can be trans or gay or bi, then what basis does the relegation of women to a reproductive sub-class have to stand on? this is why you get some cishet women who ally with the queer proletariat, and some cishet women who don't.

but then, why do i keep specifying "subclass" instead of just saying class outright? here's the thing- as the categorization of women as homemakers has weaked (which is a good thing!) the antagonisms preventing queer people from reaching positions of power in a capitalist society

have also weakened. trans people were and still are highly oppressed under capitalism because our very existence poses a threat to the relegation of women to reproductive labor. again, same goes for gay/bi people. but our existence isn't in contradiction to capitalism itself.

btw as i continue this thread i just want to throw in the analysis/critique from @nastasiaMarxist, she's very smart and well informed about this sort of thing and raises a very good point: https://twitter.com/nastasiaMarxist/status/1296128943968235520?s=20

https://twitter.com/nastasiaMarxist/status/1296128943968235520?s=20

i'm gonna take a minute to bring up some clarifiers:
1.) i'm exclusively talking about america
2.) basically from the beginning of capitalism to 2003 being queer in any capacity did in fact have an extremely high correlation to class because it was criminalized

i gotta add one more clarifier: i shouldn't have used queer to describe the phenomenon i'm talking about because it really only applies to cis gays + bis.

ok cool lets continue

remember how i said that bougoise women have started outsourcing reproductive labor to proletarian women? i believe this very important. we've seen an increase in support for gay people but i believe that essentially it's no longer a class struggle.

because bourgeois women have started outsourcing reproductive labor to proletarian women, they don't have as much of a reason to oppose gay people. if women aren't being pigeonholed into "stay at home and watch the kids while the husband goes to work" then there isn't as much-

of a reason to oppose two men together or two women together because you aren't adhering to the nuclear family model in the first place.

i'm writing this off the cuff so i want to point out, THE NUCLEAR FAMILY IS AT THE ROOT OF ALL THIS BULLSHIT.

however, because women are still pigeonholed in the the reproductive labor of, well, actual reproduction, as well as being objectified for the pleasure of men, there is still SOME reason for the oppression of all queer people, but especially trans people.

so, because capitalism figured out how to self-sustain without the nuclear family (commodify reproductive labor and force women of color into it), the material conditions were ripe and the AIDS crisis defanged the queer movement by straight up killing all the radicals.

you know how a lot of racial justice got liberalized at the same time because the fbi assasinated all the black marxists? AIDS did that for queer people. and, of course, because of the nature of it's transmission, it hit queer proletarians the hardest.

like, i really don't think i can overstate how many fucking people this thing killed. and remember the important thing i said at the beginning- queerness isn't heritable. so a whole generation got wiped out, leaving only the bourgeois gays behind.

so then you get a whole new generation of queer kids. trans people are still maligned because they still pose an intrinsic threat to the system, but gay kids? not so much.... as long as you make sure they don't get any funny ideas.

keep quiet, don't cause a fuss, and we'll toss a couple scraps your way. with the old queer liberation movement eviscerated, a few gays ascended to bourgeois status, essentially acting the same way obama did- as false hope.

trouble is the hereditary thing. remember, bourgeois status is hereditary, race is hereditary, but being gay isn't. the old queer movement stood in opposition to capital because they were maligned by the state- if they weren't proletarian, they were lumpenproles or lumpenbourgois

this is a bit conspiratorial, but i think that the state learned their lesson after that, and took the genocide of an entire queer generation as an opportunity to restructure the movement to be friendly to capital. using ellen, of course.

this is all relatively recent. we're talking obama-era shit here. but anyway, those are my thoughts, and i know anastasia is about to mercilessly roast me for this. and she probably right, lmao. take her analysis over mine.

anyway here's anastasia roasting me: https://twitter.com/nastasiaMarxist/status/1296139017788899329?s=20

https://twitter.com/nastasiaMarxist/status/1296139017788899329?s=20

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