I know a closeted trans girl who is very clearly autistic, but who has not pursued an ASD diagnosis because she believes that she will not get treatment for her gender dysphoria if she also has an ASD diagnosis. And so she goes without any accommodations for her autism, just so that she has a better chance of getting treatment for her other major problem. Norway’s state trans health system refusing to treat autistic people is a known problem. According to Norwegian law, this type of discrimination is not supposed to happen, rather anyone who desires to transition should be allowed to transition. And yet it still happens that many Norwegians are denied that right to transition on grounds such as being autistic, and for this the health system responsible gets at most a sternly-worded letter from the government, as if reciting the law makes it a reality.

So this girl I know first pursued transitional healthcare in 2016, but is yet to actually receive any of that healthcare. Rather, the staff in the health system said that my friend needed to get out more, become more outgoing, and earn some money first. That’s what she told me they said. And so now my friend goes with me to this job skills course organized by some shoddy welfare contractor. Several other people who attend this course have gone on absolutely vitriolically transphobic tirades with us two present. And several times, my friend and I attempted to contact the staff organizing the course, to tell them that she was genuinely scared of these vitriolic transphobes, that they were traumatizing her and causing her immense distress. And the staff refused to take any action at every turn, always saying, “When you get a real job, you’ll have to be ready to deal with all kinds of people, even if you don’t agree with the things they say”.

What we could do about the staff’s refusal to take action was to file a complaint to the welfare administration, but it takes many weeks for these complaints to be processed, and this was an issue that needed to be resolved immediately. And who knows what the welfare administration would’ve actually done about the issue, probably the same “sternly-worded letter” nonsense as before, or at best transferring us to a different contractor, which would probably have the exact same issue of being too fond of cost-cutting to actually do anything about the actual Nazis in our midst… Thankfully, though, one of the transphobic reactionaries was kicked off the course when he threatened another participant with violence, another has become a no-show on most days, the third hasn’t brought up trans issues ever again after his first tirade. On top of this, another pro-trans participant has been attending more regularly, and she is principled enough to shut down transphobia even when the staff refuses to do the same. So the issue of transphobia at the job skills course seems to have died down somewhat.

I myself am taking this job skills course because I live in a home with a deeply transphobic relative, and I need to find a well-paying job that will allow me to move out and fund my transition. I already have an autism diagnosis, and I am also non-binary, which means that state healthcare is very unlikely to give me transitional medicine unless I wait and wait and wait and work myself to the bone trying to get them to actually respect their legal obligations. And other options for trans healthcare in Norway are getting thinned out, and state healthcare itself is getting gutted. Which means that I intend to fund my own transition entirely by myself, including by buying gray-market hormone therapy.

The last time I tried scraping together however little money I could for one measly pack of bicalutamide, it was seized by customs and destroyed. Customs even sent me a nice little letter about the dangers of buying medicine from foreign online pharmacies. I still keep that letter beside my bed.

And trust me, I tried voting, too. I voted Socialist Left, because I believed that of the parties that I liked “enough”, that Socialist Left were the most likely to get a substantial number of seats and join the governing coalition, without compromising my political interests too much. And indeed, 2021 was a pretty good election for Socialist Left. But they didn’t end up in the governing coalition, because they demanded that Labor have stronger commitments to fighting climate change. So the current minority government of Norway is between Labor and Center. Which means that even though I tried voting for a party with good LGBT+ policy proposals, nevertheless a number of major government positions in Norway are currently filled by people who have openly expressed transphobic views.

And indeed look at the news media. Hell, look at social media! Ain’t it just great to read a privately-owned newspaper, only to suddenly find oneself gazing at yet more transphobia? Even ostensibly publicly-owned news publications like NRK, they aren’t immune to transphobia, either. And social media, fediverse aside, has all these damned algorithms that keep showing me the most vitriolic shit. And this is the type of stuff that people form their opinions and worldviews from!

So I have “rights” under liberalism. The right to change my legal name and gender marker, the right to transitional healthcare, freedom of expression, freedom of the press, the right to control my body and have a say in the government… But time and time again, all practical experience shows that having rights on paper does not mean anything unless the system in place allows them to mean something. I still consider myself to be an anarchist, but I have a lot of respect for Marxist-Leninists. Both anarchism and Marxism-Leninism understand that liberal “democracies”, “rights”, and “freedoms” are practically speaking worthless. Liberal rights only truly apply to the bourgeoisie, because it was the bourgeoisie who came up with these rights, as they secured their class interests in the transition out of feudalism. Liberalism was a progressive force at that time: it is a progressive force still today only insofar as it sows the seeds of a better permanent replacement, and it is a regressive force insofar as it sows the seeds of a worse temporary replacement.

It is always grassroots LGBT+ activism that brings forth LGBT+ rights. Always. Do not ascribe to liberalism what was the work of some of the most wretched of the Earth, working tirelessly to build a better world despite liberalism.