Sock Dem to Syndicalist: Why Capitalism Can Gargle My Trans Disabled Balls
By Shea O’Connor
I began my time on the left as a reformist, sock dem looking for systemic change through a combination of piecemeal reforms, non-violence and a faith that « deep down everyone is good ». I voted, door knocked for municipal candidates, ran clothing exchanges and was involved in Keynesianist campaigns such as the Fight For $15. None of it worked, but none of those failures radicalized me faster than two major events that took place almost simultaneously in my 20s; becoming disabled and coming out as queer/transgender.
I am trans, not just any trans, a visible gender non-conforming queer. My pronouns are they/he. My mom believes in human rights, volunteering, church food banks and clothing drives. And my dad was a union man. I grew up on picket lines and volunteering for Christian soup kitchens. My rebellion was animal rights and punk music. Neonazi boneheads dominated local shows until we beat them back, my friends and I share a crass outlook on life because of this and to this day we still unintentionally offend and scare leftists who aren’t from our local area. I guess growing up through that changes you for life. Although I knew fighting was the only way to keep fascism at bay I still spewed pacifist nonsense. My punk/metal friends and I have all gone our separate ways into various flavors of the left. I am the only one unfortunate enough to be spared the trials and tribulations of becoming a mainstream business union/Labour Council member. Mainly because one can’t join business unions or labour councils if you’re disabled, I’ll give credit where it’s due, I am welcomed into these spaces with a voice but no vote, which honestly feels like a slap in the face. I am however a proud member of the Industrial Workers of the World, ou Le Syndicat Industriel des Travailleurs et des Travailleuses, as well as a tenants union SLAM-MATU. Every year I have been alive I have gone further left, one shitty job after another until I was unable to work. I worked my ass off in high school making straight A’s (not a brag I was a loser), then pulled some pretty sweet grades in college, which was pretty impressive considering I was self medicating with drugs and alcohol to cope with being a sexual violence survivor. I decided to put off entering the field of social work (my down to earth goal was working with other survivors of intimate partner abuse). But I did get a job right out of college, nothing fancy or cool, call center work, which is basically being yelled at by Americans all day.
Then my dream job fell into my vegan lap, I was hired as a photographer for a local no kill animal rescue. This sounds like a pretty sweet gig, and the work itself was one of the best jobs I have ever had in my life, my passion for animal rights meeting my artistic and creative outlet. The problem was, my boss sucked, and her boss was even worse. Two white saviors who touted progressive ideas but workers were overworked and underpaid, I’m still owed back wages over a decade later, I have lost hope of ever seeing that money again though. Regardless I thought I was living the dream, working in art, and with animals, plus we ran an animal food bank so I was working in the field I was trained to do for my sensible career path while also getting my foot in the door as a photographer, a typically male dominated field that is really hard to break without any formal training or education. The bosses had to stop paying me due to the manager and owner not knowing how to manage their funds, all the « staff » went on welfare being told « we will pay you back when we get grants » (these grants were never applied for). I was 22, hopeful and naive to the point that “dumb” is probably a better descriptor. So I applied for welfare and continued “working” 12-14 hour days 6 days a week. (Not counting the round the clock care my bottle fed foster kittens were getting at my home). Thus began my personal cycle of poverty, one I still haven’t escaped to this day.
This is all too common in the compassion field, we are guilted into thinking we are fighting the good fight, when really we are being exploited by a shitty boss (in my case two shitty bosses). The animal rescue even had a sign on the front door that read « No sexism, homophobia, transphobia, racism, speciesism… » etc. Didn’t say anything about workers rights though, which isn’t surprising. I won’t go into details but this degenerated into animal neglect, overcrowding and eventually I quit. I outed the rescue for animal neglect, they threatened to sue, an animal rights legal defense group stepped in and the boss backed off. But the damage was done, those long days, witnessing so much animal cruelty with no support from my bosses, a hostile work environment PLUS the domestic abuse I had survived culminated into C-PTSD.
A few months after quitting I realized I had a lot of healing to do. A few years prior to this I had made a tumblr (again not a brag, more penance but I was at one point vegan tumblr famous) and I remember seeing the word « genderqueer » in the early days of tumblr and said to myself « So that’s what’s wrong with me ». I avoided that for years through workaholism. Part of the healing process from compassion burnout and PTSD was facing that side of myself and coming out. You know who can be transphobic as hell? White middle class vegans, and practically overnight I was ousted from the animal rights community (this was in part to me speaking out against a sexual abuser in the animal rights scene but that wasn’t the main factor). But at this point I didn’t care, I wanted to broaden my horizons and by this point I realized the vast majority of animal abuse stems from capitalism so I turned to a more general anti-capitalist approach while exploring my gender identity through a local LGBTQ+ NGO. Animal rights activism turned to general food and environmental activism and I got really into the anti-GMO movement, which led to a brief stint with conspiracy theory type thinking, which thanks to being openly feminist and genderqueer didn’t last long. I grew local organic food, tried starting a local Food Not Bombs chapter and ran a Free Store/Clothing Exchange. As I became more confident in my gender identity I also began facilitating the meetings through said LGBTQ+ NGO. I thought I was making a difference, and locally I probably was. I never read theory so I was an accidental reformist despite hating capitalism with every fiber of my being. Theory without direct action is an academic circle jerk and direct action without theory is just running around in circles failing to disrupt the status quo due to still being indoctrinated by it. If I was going to make a difference I needed to educate myself beyond tumblr hot takes.
Employment wise I was working for a local vegan/gluten free/organic bakery and cafe. I wasn’t a syndicalist at the time and I remember really liking my first boss. She let us take home food that couldn’t be sold, I made good tips and liked my coworkers. Sure some customers were yuppies but most of them were either people with food allergies or vegans with politics similar to my own, as a coffee snob I had fun experimenting with different vegan milks for lattes so all in all I enjoyed my job. This was the liberal paradise small business owners want the consumer to idealize. Then my boss sold the cafe and the new boss was terrible. She micromanaged us, called the store front during hours constantly « to check in », which knee caps customer service when you’re working alone. Tips went down because I couldn’t do my fucking job properly due to being micro managed. At our first staff meeting the boss decided our tips should be donated to charity and I blurted out « That’s illegal ». The wildest thing happened next, with no notice it became against the rules to take the garbage food and I was fired for « theft ». The boss’s 14 year old daughter started working my shifts as well . I made the mistake of standing alone against the boss and lost my job. This speaks volumes to needing solidarity industrial unions, at a small business with only three workers I would have needed an organized workplace to stop the tip theft. I’m sure the profit incentive of not having to pay for barely legal child labour also made the boss’s decision a little easier for her. This is more often the case of working for a local business, they hide behind a facade of being family first when really that just means screwing their workers over more.
I started caring more about workers rights. Politically I joined a local « grass roots group » (which I later learned was a front group funded by the NDP to try to recruit the youth into their party). They gave Food Not Bombs money no strings attached for food serves, which in hind sight defeated the entire fucking purpose of food not bombs but locally all our dumpsters were locked and an NGO already had a monopoly on grocery store donations going to church food banks, obviously we gave up after a couple months because there was no point. NGOs really do ruin direct action and mutual aid.
I was campaigning a bit for $15 and Fairness, door knocking for local politicians, running a free store, facilitating LGBTQ+ support groups, and working as a part time PSW. I was also getting sicker and would be hospitalized due to undiagnosed and untreated C-PTSD. The hospital I was in was transphobic, constantly deadnaming and misgendering me. Nurses were really cool but the head of psychology was transphobic and the emergency room was so terribly managed they caused even more trauma. When I was released I went full NGO mode, citing the Ontario Code of Human Rights and backed by the NGO I was with (by this point I was the Director of Trans Inclusion) I was able to sit on a working group to write and implement a trans inclusive policy. It took the hospital YEARS to put it into practice because they couldn’t afford to re-do their forms and intake system to avoid deadnaming* trans people. The policy stopped being implemented over covid. It was in place less than five years before it was revoked and trans people are back to being dehumanized and traumatized at this hospital. NGO groups cannot fight corrupt management, only an organized and radicalized working class can seize the means of production and make sure patients are getting the care they need.
[*Deadnaming is using the name a trans or non-binary person used before transitioning. Hearing my deadname feels like being punched in the gut and the emergency room outed me to a person I knew there who didn’t know my deadname before they used it.]
So you might be asking “What about NGOs in the community instead of workplaces?” Well do I have a fucking story for you! In 2014 my friends and I were at our local small city pride parade. A straight guy was taking advantage of the cheap drinks at the beer tent. He made a pass at my friend, she politely turned him down, he threatened to rape her, I intervened, and he called me a “faggot”. The cops heard and saw all this go down and still kicked me and my queer/trans friends out of pride. The straight guy got to stay. The local NGO did nothing to defend us in this situation because the local police department is a large donor. Three out of the five people on the Pride board of directors are also cops, so to this day there are still cops in that city’s parade. Nothing was done. But I was kicked off the NGOs board of directors in 2017 for speaking out against cops in pride.
I don’t want to be too harsh on NGOs, they gave me a support system in real life when nothing else was available in my community. They gave me other trans people to talk to when I had none, they built up my self esteem so I could facilitate groups and pass on my knowledge to trans kids and adults just starting their gender journeys. They are also rife with savior complexes, bigoted parents who expect me to « fix » their children and police use NGOs to get their foot in the door to exploit and disguise their control over oppressed communities. Mutual aid is more effective and more direct. Social workers are able to provide better quality care than random volunteers. Sometimes there are concurrent issues and trauma from being trans under capitalism, a well meaning volunteer with a savior complex can cause a lot of damage. I did well as a volunteer for an NGO, I was damn good with my clients, but I was also exploited for unpaid labour. I struggled with my gender identity for years and I rather no trans kid has to say « so that’s what’s wrong with me » like I did, and the NGO/volunteer industrial complex is happy to take advantage of that empathy.
What about local politics? Well the politician I helped door knock did get elected. He claimed to be a socialist but he voted in favor of hiring a fascist security company to police the homeless. So I guess he forgot to include the word “national” before socialist in his campaign. The security company, CDN, has ties to known white supremacists and have assaulted locals resulting in broken bones. One time I was administering first aid to a person who was overdosing and the security guard stepped over her body as she was vomiting without offering to help me. Police don’t keep us safe, we keep us safe. Electoral politics don’t work, even at a local level and I learned that the hard way.
A solidarity union unites disabled workers with social and health care workers so we can fight for each other’s rights together. Capitalism and the bosses will never be on our side, the almighty dollar will always take precedence over the value of human life. Begging for crumbs at the table, appealing to their empathy and logic, using the law and codes of human rights, legalistic reforms… none of it works. It’s a bandaid. As capitalist austerity attacks housing rights I believe in expanding syndicalism beyond the workplace and into the streets through tenants unions. I tried solidarity networks very briefly but they tend to become another NGO recreating paperwork and hoops « clients » need to jump through to access services, always with a white cis saviour at the helm, leading the crusade on behalf of the oppressed, and fuck that. Capitalism is designed so the rich get richer. I did everything right in life and am still living in poverty due to a disability beyond my control. We cannot win with a system that stacks that deck against us. Solidarity means the oppressed and downtrodden organizing together, uniting with the working class, and fighting for our own liberation.