transgenderism and the epochal crisis of capitalism
the second death of nature, of the mother and of the left
What if the left has become the very thing it once claimed to fight? At Let Women Speak Rio 2025, it became crystal clear: more and more women—especially those with deep roots in progressive politics—are walking away. Why? Because the left has abandoned them. It has silenced women, justified male violence in the name of “progress,” and embraced an ideology that commodifies life itself. This essay is not a call to join the right—it’s a call to wake up. To see how uncritical transgender advocacy, technocratic utopias, and capitalist patriarchy are merging into a dystopian project that erases women, exploits nature, and rebrands domination as liberation. If that sounds extreme, read on.
Key Points at a Glance:
Women Are Leaving the Left: Disillusionment with mainstream leftist politics is driving many women—especially feminists—away, as issues like male violence are ignored or reframed under the guise of progress.
Speech and Censorship: The left, once a defender of free expression, is increasingly resorting to silencing dissent, especially around sensitive topics like transgenderism and immigration.
Transgenderism and Capitalist Patriarchy: Rather than a simple rights movement, transgenderism is positioned here as a strategic tool in the expansion of capitalist patriarchal control, particularly through the commodification of life and the symbolic “death of the mother.”
Techno-Scientific Dystopia: From assisted suicide to artificial wombs, the rise of biotech and gender ideology serves a broader project of primitive accumulation, detaching human reproduction from biology and ecosystems.
Elite Environmentalism and Social Control: Climate techno-solutions like geoengineering are framed as elite management tools, not emancipatory politics—part of a broader shift toward planetary control and intensified exploitation.
Repression and Resistance: Global censorship, NGO capture of social movements, and harsh penalties for dissent reveal a system protecting elite interests amid growing unrest.
Reclaiming Feminism: The solution does not lie with the right, but in a renewed, radical feminism that recognises the material roots of women’s oppression and challenges both capitalist accumulation and patriarchal technoscience.
Like this piece? You can share it broadly and buy me a coffee via Wise.
At Let Women Speak Rio 2025, many of my reflections on why women are walking away from political parties traditionally associated with the institutional left were powerfully confirmed. Over an unhurried dinner conversation with Kellie-Jay Keen, I saw in her a striking example of this political shift: a woman who rejects the social injustices upheld by capitalist elites and once identified with the left—though without a deep political or intellectual framework. Her story reflects a growing group of disillusioned former leftists whose departure speaks volumes about the left’s current crisis. As we know, this loosely defined and often uncritical base makes up a significant part of today’s “left-wing” landscape.
For many women, the breaking point came when male violence against women was not only excused but framed as progress under the banner of transgender rights. Yet their disillusionment with the left goes deeper. Critical issues that deserved serious, nuanced discussion have been consistently shut down in favour of dogmatic slogans and debate avoidance. Immigration is a clear example: repeating phrases like “no human being is illegal” offers little room for addressing public concerns, and the refusal to engage with critics often borders on the dismissive. This becomes especially volatile when high-profile scandals emerge—such as the case of the grooming gangs in the UK, where groups of Pakistani men targeted white British girls for abuse, referring to them as “white trash.” Incidents like these ignite public outrage, not because people are inherently reactionary, but because the political left often seems unprepared—or unwilling—to reckon with the real-world consequences of its own blind spots.
In an interview with Folha de S. Paulo, political scientist Yascha Mounk was asked whether the left has grown too used to shutting down ideas instead of engaging in open debate. His response was telling:
Yes, and I think that has something to do with the fact that the left has become stuck in an ivory tower mindset. When you're in a space like a university where the left has been dominant for many decades, it is easy to appeal to authority because you know the person in a position of authority agrees with you.
Although countries in Europe and Latin America have adopted quite extreme forms of censorship, they have failed to make the ideas they aim to censor disappear.
The left should reclaim its roots as a defender of freedom of expression. The sad truth is that the establishment always seeks to impose limits on speech. In many countries, the left has started to be tempted by this mistaken position, which goes against its history and tradition, because it has begun to view itself as the establishment.
Mounk also says something that I, along with hundreds of others on the left, have said before: the strategy of calling people fascists and Nazis is not a good one. The persistence in this rhetoric reveals the arrogance and sense of entitlement of those who see themselves as guardians of all that is good. When asked why the Democrats failed to defeat Trump even after "trying everything," Mounk responds:
Well, you are both right and wrong. I would say that the Democrats tried every strategy except looking in the mirror and trying to adopt popular positions. In a way, Trump has been much more ruthless and agile in dealing with his weaknesses. So when he realised abortion was a danger for him, he promised not to sign a federal law banning the procedure. The Democrats did not do much to address their vulnerabilities on issues like immigration and the participation of trans women in competitive sports or other areas where they are deeply unpopular.
For those who read my piece on Trump's victory, Mounk said nothing new. But if you want to continue on this theme, beyond Mounk's interview, you can listen to the podcast by
with Catherine Liu, professor of media and film studies at the University of California, in English, here.What has not yet been sufficiently discussed is that the unrestricted defence of transgenderism has helped dismantle the pro-women fantasy that the left has historically instrumentalised, leading thousands of progressive women to feel politically homeless. More and more women, especially those with some political organising experience on the left, have come to see left and right as two sides of the same deeply entrenched patriarchy.
The decision by broad sectors of the left to silence women, disregard the impact of uncritically embracing transgenderism, and justify misogyny to the point of openly enabling male violence against women is something that cannot—and must not—be ignored. Still, and crucially, the answer does not lie with the right. It lies in feminism, and in recognising that transgenderism represents a leap forward in the ongoing process of primitive accumulation.
FROM TRANSGENDERISM TO TRANSHUMANISM
Transgenderism is not simply about access to bathrooms or about males encroaching on women’s hard-won rights. At its core, the de-sexing of human beings is a pivotal step in advancing capitalist patriarchy’s next phase of accumulation. The symbolic (and material) death of “the mother” is essential to sever subjects—who, as human animals, are intrinsically connected to ecosystems and non-human natures—from their biological and ecological roots. In their place, a patriarchal techno-scientific dystopia emerges—one where man alone claims the power to create and extinguish life, as seen in the growing acceptance of so-called “assisted suicide.” We are witnessing a moment in history where men stand closer than ever—though still short of their macho-utopian ideal—to fully dominating the processes of re/production.
We are talking about the next frontier of accumulation, where the commodification of life will reach unprecedented levels. The spread and normalisation of prostitution, pornography and surrogacy as "just jobs like any other"; the creation of artificial wombs (promoted as a "noble mission" to save premature babies); uterine transplants in males; laboratory experiments involving human and non-human hybrids; and Frankensteinian medicine aimed at creating synthetic sex; the sale of eggs, milk and semen; reproductive technologies such as in vitro fertilisation (expanded in the US by a Trump executive order)… all of this is part of a broader process of normalising the total commodification of life.
The individual-as-enterprise of the neoliberal era is slowly being disintegrated into amorphous parts that gain meaning – and, more importantly, value – through a techno-scientific process validated by a new linguistic imposition; a movement that begins in Science and Academia – and is quickly disseminated by the media and globalising multilateral organisations such as the UN apparatus, World Bank, International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), among others.
Capitalist patriarchy is in its final phase and must be creative to maintain the flow of accumulation in this agonising stage. In this sense, it is impossible to overlook that declining global fertility rates pose a real threat to capitalist patriarchal expansionism, alongside the depletion of other Cheap Natures, like energy and commodities (see Moore, 2014; 2021a; 2021b; Colerato, 2023).
For women—long treated as soulless non-bodies—the erasure of the mother and the radical commodification of life signal the realisation of The Handmaid’s Tale in our present. This is no dystopian fantasy, but a reality quietly rolled out on a global scale, fuelled by billions in funding from individuals tied to the pharmaceutical and medical industries—many of whom are vocal transhumanists. Figures like Martine Rothblatt and the Pritzker family, to name just two, have played a key role in advancing the transgender agenda under the radar of public scrutiny, like
has been constantly demonstrating.Transvestites have existed since patriarchy began (see Graeber, 2012), as have mythologies which reinforce gender norms – such as those from Yoruba society or the Hijras in India. What is unprecedented is the idea that human beings can change sex with the help of biotechnology because the sexed bodies of humans are not a concrete reality shared with the sexed reality not only of other mammalian animals but also of most extra-human natures on Earth.
What is unprecedented is the disconnection from material reality to affirm that men are women and should be entitled to occupy all women's spaces, and that society must subscribe to this fantasy, no matter how unfounded it is. In this dystopian vein, making children and adolescents believe that it is possible to be born in the wrong body and medicating them in the name of an invisible, intangible gender identity – invented in the 20th century by psychiatry and sex therapists but conveniently unprovable – has become widely defended.
The androcentric fantasy that humans can dominate nature and self-create through biotechnology and language is not new—it’s a centuries-old male dream. Since the days of Francis Bacon and René Descartes, the ultimate ambition of Science has been to seize the power of creation. The effort to wrest this power from women is as old as patriarchy itself. We saw it in the symbolic death of the Mother Goddess, when creative force was reassigned to a male God. We endured Aristotle’s claim that women were nothing more than passive vessels for the male seed—the sole bearer of soul and life. We watched as the so-called “fathers” of the Scientific Revolution, eager witch hunters, built their authority by suppressing women’s knowledge and autonomy. And now, we confront a postmodern form of matricide: the calculated erasure of the mother, as today’s Big Men of Science inch closer to becoming the exclusive agents of reproduction. Some of these steps were already taken in the 1980s—with the advent of animal cloning and the genetic engineering of seeds, plants, and non-human animals.
Alongside this, we witness the rise of elite-driven narratives promising total control over the planet itself—even the atmosphere. In the language of technocratic environmentalism, the destruction caused by endless capital accumulation can supposedly be managed with a cocktail of technotopian fantasies and postmodern relativism. From carbon markets to solar geoengineering, and even attempts to manufacture rainfall to avoid disrupting major events, the message is clear: Nature, like woman, must be controlled.
As capitalism enters a deep, epochal crisis, the burden once again falls on the backs of its historically exploited classes—women, the working class, and colonised peoples, including Nature itself. The war being waged is both internal and external: the state and its elites tighten their grip on the population, male violence against women escalates globally, and new forms of geopolitical aggression unfold. In this climate, any resistance—especially from women and colonised peoples—must be stifled. The total domestication of the proletariat is well underway, with elites extracting maximum surplus value while assuming minimal responsibility. Whether under the banner of right-wing oligarchs or left-wing corporatists, the result is the same: intensified exploitation, cloaked in different rhetoric.
Those who disagree with the planetary management project driven by the managerial class at the service of elites in this epochal crisis of capitalism, and who are willing to do something about it, can expect trouble. The deliberate censorship on social media (something pointed out in Mounk's interview with Folha) and beyond – including disproportionately harsh prison sentences for "crimes" of civil disobedience, "offensive" Halloween costumes, and calling male people men – is the only way to control a population broadly dissatisfied with the state of affairs and unwilling to give in. The controversial
summed it up nicely:The global crackdown on dissent is not a European, British, American, Canadian, Australian, or Brazilian operation. It is an international, systemic operation. Governments are not forcing or extorting global corporations to censor dissent. Left and right politics have nothing to do with it. It is an integral part of the ongoing evolution of global capitalism, the hegemonic global system we all live under.
We can expect the class of Big Men, with their strategically placed appendages in governments, the UN, NGOs, and the media, to do everything possible to expand their accumulation opportunities and keep their Earth-control project in motion. Some call this moment the Capitalism of Finitude and argue that democracy is not important, quite the opposite.
Revolutions happen when elite incompetence reaches its limit, and they are usually preceded by the organisation of dissatisfied women, as in the Russian Revolution. But the left's delusional misogyny, which prevents it from even listening to feminist analysis on the matter, coupled with the bourgeois co-optation of social movements via NGO-isation, has blinded the radical spectrum, removed its teeth, and crippled resistance. Our "great promises of the left" are more concerned with making money on Privacy, serving liberal philanthropists while securing their interests, or enjoying the perks of parliamentary amendments for personal gain.
Until next time,
Marina Colerato
If we haven’t met yet: I’m a Latina ecofeminist journalist from Brazil, with over a decade of experience in social and environmental justice movements. I’m the founder and editor of Ginna, a newly launched eco/feminist press carving space for radical critique in a media landscape dominated by greenwashing and liberal platitudes. I hold a Master’s in Social Sciences, and for more than five years, Substack has been my home for uncompromising political analysis, feminist thought, and essays that push back against the mainstream narratives. You can check part of my work here.
Like this piece? You can share it broadly and buy me a coffee via Wise.
References:
COLERATO, Marina P. Climate crisis and the Anthropocene: ecofeminist perspectives to liberate life. Dissertation (Master in Social Sciences). Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo, 2023. Available at: https://repositorio.pucsp.br/jspui/handle/handle/39337.
GRAEBER, David. Debt: the first 5.000 years. New Jersey: Melville House Publishing, 2012.
MOORE, Jason. “The end of Cheap Nature, or, how I learned to stop worrying about ‘the’ environment and love the crisis of capitalism”. In: Structures of the World Political Economy and the Future of Global Conflict and Cooperation, SUTER, Christian; CHASE-234 DUNN, Christopher (eds.). Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2014. Chapter 13, p. 285-314
MOORE, Jason. Climate, Class & the Great Frontier: From Primitive Accumulation to the Great Implosion, unpublished paper, World-Ecology Research Group, Binghamton University, 2021a. Available at: https://jasonwmoore.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Moore-Class-Climate-and-the-Great-Frontier-circulating-September-2021.pdf. A
MOORE, Jason. Opiates of the environmentalists? Anthropocene illusions, planetary management and the Capitalocene alternative. Abstrakt, 2021b. Available at: http://www.abstraktdergi.net/opiates-of-the-environmentalists-anthropocene-illusions-planetary-management-the-capitalocene-alternative/.