The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) platform is both “trans-liberatory” and “socialist-feminist,” a DSA leader declares in a new video detailing the far-left political parties sweeping agenda items.
“We have a feminism section that is trans-liberatory and also socialist-feminist,” DSA National Political Education Committee Chair Michaela Brangan says in the video reviewing DSA’s newly-released program document.
Brangan provides DSA’s definition of “socialist-feminist” – but assumes the meaning of “trans-liberatory” is clear:
“We have a feminism section that is trans-liberatory and also socialist-feminist. For those of you who don’t know the word ‘socialist-feminist,’ socialist feminism is about putting working-class women in the driver’s seat of the feminist and women’s movement.”
Trans-liberatory has its roots in the phrase “transgender liberation,” but has apparently been expanded to include other types of self-proclaimed liberation.
While DSA’s online program does not specifically mention “trans-liberation” or “trans-liberatory,” it does contain one mention of “queer liberation,” in the context of socialist feminism:
“Socialist feminism fights for queer liberation and the freedoms of all working class women. Stop gender violence and end policies that oppress bodily autonomy and intimate life, including patriarchal restrictions on abortion, childbirth and childraising, gender expression and transition, marriage, and divorce. Ban sex discrimination and ensure fair compensation and support for all forms of labor, including care work.”
Like the Wages for Women movement of decades past, socialist feminism is a “rallying cry for women to be set free,” especially when they’re domestic workers who have been denied the ability to unionize, Brangan says:
“Like, maybe, you’ve heard of the Wages for Housework movement that started in the 1970’s as, like, this rallying cry for women to be set free. It has the justice towards that, as well, because it really is also about, like, not just fair wages for the classic kinds of work, but also the kinds of work that not only have been underpaid and overworked, but also a lot of people have been unable to get unions in this country. Domestic labor is that people are not entitled to unions here. So, all of those things are kind of embodied in that.”
