A Queer Marxist [Trans]Feminism: Queer and Trans Social Reproduction

This chapter reads work within queer Marxism and trans studies that has begun to address the socially reproductive character of queer sexual expressions and queer and trans gender expressions for LGBTQ communal formations and the material conditions of such work. The chapter opens with a brief introduction to contemporary Marxist feminist discourse on social reproduction, connecting this to current queer commentary on emotional labour. Building upon the work of Wages Due Lesbians, I consider work within women of colour feminism and LGBTQ activism that is sidelined in social reproduction theory and Marxist feminism, to provide an expanded conceptualisation of trans and queer social reproduction. This includes reading the work and politics of Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR), a Third World and Black Gay/Trans Liberation group based in New York in the early 1970s, to concretise a further scene of queer and trans social reproduction from the archive of LGBTQ herstory. I conclude by synthesizing an expanded definition of social reproduction to conceptualize and account for the work of the reproduction of queer and trans life