Safer schools or a radical Marxist sexual revolution?

Publicly the person who set up the Safe Schools Coalition program says it’s to stop bullying and suicides, but she told a Marxism conference it was part of a wider Marxist strategy to radically change society.

Roz Ward, from La Trobe University’s Australian Research Centre in Sex Health and Society, told the Melbourne 2015 Marxism Conference, “In 2010 … I was the person who set up Safe Schools Coalition in Victoria” (SSCV). This program has now been expanded to become the federally funded Safe Schools Coalition Australia (SSCA).

The public defence of the SSCA’s particular format has been that it’s necessary to stop bullying and reduce self-harm among LGBTI students and students claiming various sexual identities other than male or female.

However, to the Marxism Conference, Roz Ward gave a Marxist analysis of how the ruling capitalist class imposed conventional notions of male and female, sex, marriage and natural family on society to “break the spirits of ordinary people”.

Like any ideology, sexual Marxism has its own language that needs to be deciphered.

Marxist doctrine says that the capitalist class (the wealthy owners of capital) has used all the main institutions of society – government, the courts, the churches and the culture – to oppress, subjugate and economically exploit the working class.

Ward says that as part of this process of exploitation, capitalists have imposed cultural and moral norms around sex, marriage and the natural family that inhibit sexual freedom.

“To smooth the operation of capitalism the ruling class has benefited, and continues to benefit, from oppressing our bodies, our relationships, sexuality and gender identities alongside sexism, homophobia and transphobia.

“Both serve to break the spirits of ordinary people, to consume our thoughts, to make us accept the status quo and for us to keep living or aspiring to live, or feel like we should live, in small social units and families where we must reproduce and take responsibility for those people in those units,” she said.

Ward argues that this capitalist social and cultural construct extends to every aspect of our society: “Apart from social stigma and discrimination, almost every single structure in society is set up to accommodate only two possible genders, male or female.

“Everything from the toilets we use, the school uniforms, changing rooms, all official documents, passports, the process is that you go through airports, everything is divided into these two limited gender options.”

Just as a political revolution is needed to liberate workers from capitalist economic oppression, Ward argues that a sexual revolution is needed to liberate everyone from capitalist sexual oppression. Indeed, sexual liberation would loosen the capitalist bonds on the culture and the economy.