By Will Hansen
As anti-queer groups, emboldened by the election of Donald Trump in the USA, seek to disrupt queer community events, transgender historian Will Hansen reflects on how important solidarity between workers and queer communities has been to the struggle against oppression in Aotearoa.
With anti-trans bills set to appear before Parliament, and groups like Destiny Church committed to scaring queer people out of public life, it is of vital importance that all workers act in solidarity with queer communities. We must recognise that queer rights are workers’ rights, and that throughout our history the struggle for queer liberation has been advanced by activists also committed to the struggle against capitalism.
As a historian, I believe that by learning about these histories helps us to move forward stronger.
Aotearoa’s first Gay Liberation Fronts were founded in 1972 by militant unionists, socialists, and Marxists. They argued that the gender binary and the heterosexual nuclear family were base units of capitalism, and true sexual freedom could only be won as part of a broader social revolution.
Gay liberationists encouraged queer people to come out at their workplaces and get involved in their unions. Some activists created queer specific unions, like the Gay Teachers Union established in 1977.
The public service became a site of queer struggle in the late 1970s, when two transgender women petitioned their workplaces for improved rights for trans workers. One of these women was Gillian Launden. Gillian was a member of trans advocacy group Hedesthia – founded in 1972 in Lower Hutt – and in 1974 Gillian also created TransFormation, a free information service for trans people. After Gillian came out to her colleagues at the Horticultural Research Centre in 1976, she reflected in Te Mahinga Ora (then named the Public Service Journal) that she mostly received “tremendous support.” Unafraid to confront her more antagonistic coworkers, she argued: “I will accommodate your feelings up to a point, but there is a limit when your feelings threaten my life and future happiness…you are not entitled to use your feelings as an excuse to dominate and oppress transexuals.”
There are many examples of local queer workplace struggles I could name. To give a more recent example, in 2013 Unite Union held a “Turn McDonalds Gay” kiss-in after the dismissal of union delegate Sam Bailey. He had been threatened with discipline for acting “too gay,” and shortly after was fired for exposing proof that McDonalds had been mistreating and underpaying workers.
Sam was supported by the Queer Avengers, a group established in 2011 who applied gay liberationist and Marxist ideas to a new era of queer struggle. Member Ani White argued that workers’ rights must entail the right to be open about sexuality and political associations. Ani described queer liberation and anti-capitalism as intertwined struggles for self-determination, demands for a world where – in Marx’s words – “the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”
Queer people – and queer workers – are here to stay. Let us queer workers take heed from our forebears and continue to commit to an anti-capitalist queer struggle. To our allies, know that your solidarity is as important to us as ever. The only way we can win, is when we act together.
Will Hansen (he/him, Pākehā) is a transgender historian living in Pōneke. He has recently completed his PhD thesis on histories of queer activism in Aotearoa, and is also a trustee of Kawe Mahara Queer Archives Aotearoa.
This is an opinion piece and the views expressed in it do not necessarily reflect the views of the PSA.
