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UPDATE: The transphobe Ada has been defending says they misgender all trans women/NBs on Blahaj who are strangers - Blåhaj Lemmy
lemmy.blahaj.zoneFurther information on the situation with the transphobia: Abigail has
repeatedly misgendered me and defended her choice by saying she chooses to refer
to all people of unknown gender as male. > Hey, Abigail here. I just want people
to know the reason this person got banned is likely because of a deleted comment
not included in that thread. OP called me ~~autistic ~~ mentally unwell for not
liking politics. THAT kind of behavior is not acceptable on lemmy.blahaj.zone,
so I reported the comment and let Ada handle it. Ada tried in good faith to
reason with OP but it was clear they just wanted to fight. So yeah, they got
banned. Ada’s a fantastic lady who’s been great at keeping the trolls at bay. >
Edit: and the bit about me misgendering them is also wrong. Gender didn’t come
into play until after I had left the conversation. English default on the
internet is male for strangers. Source:
https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/2319669
[https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/2319669] WRT the statement that I accused
them of autism for not liking politics, further info is available here:
https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/2319669
[https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/2319669]
https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/2320815
[https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/2320815]
https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/2321026
[https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/2321026]
As a person who feels anarchist principles would be the most benificial way to organize a society, I don’t personally feel like its possible to be harder left.
I always feel trepidatious engaging in hexbear threads. I can’t tell if many of the takes on here are sincere or trolling, and the immediate mass response to guessing wrong is a dissincentive.
If Hexbears get at you for being a left anarchist report em. This is a left unity site. Sectarianism is not welcome. Our anarchist comrades are.
So far, nobody has.
Hexbear has some anarchists but more MLs. The mods delete more blatant sectarianism, but it’s not always perfect.
The main point of friction always ends up being US foreign policy. MLs see you criticizing a socialist state like China and think you’re an anti, when of course it’s still evil because all states are evil. But on the other hand, we’re having this conversation in English. The biggest influence we’d have on Chinese politics from over here would be to convince other English speakers to support anti-China foreign policy in their own governments. That’s state intervention, not anarchism.
Yeah, thats fair. The biggest thought trap I see people going in to is “the enemy of my enemy”. As I see it, capital impiaralism must be dismantled, and countered, but state capitalism with socialist characteristics doesn’t look like an ultimately fruitful path for enhanced liberty, so I think its important to be critical but not dismissive. I haven’t found that to be a minority stance amongst anarchsts. Ultimately, the idea of “foriegn policy” itself is statist and true solidarity means standing up for everyone regardless of who the oppressor is.
I mean, I’m a pretty hard ML-type (the
reader) and I want to work towards a hegelian end of the state. I think the primary difference is that I see a tactical use of the state in that process. Honestly, until US imperialism and the broader capitalist structures are thrown down, I don’t see much point in arguing with anarchist comrades who agree with me on nearly all the meaningful diagnoses of society’s problems. It’s entirely a tactics/future oriented disagreement, which we can have without fucking purging each other and generally come away (ideally) both better for it.
Idk your fancy oversized hexbear emotes, but please imagine I have selected a few choice ones to signal my agreement
we fight with tools, and sometimes those tools were built by the state.
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My least favorite is the feudalisn-with-extra-markets crowd who keep doing a fascist recuperation on anarchism. They ruined “libertarian” and now they keep trying to make “anarcho-capitalist” a thing, as if political compass was a real and healthy thing
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European colonialism brought hundreds of millions out of poverty. I don’t personally think chinese socialism has been nearly as damaging, but bringing people out of poverty is not, to my mind, a sufficient metric.
Colonialism plunged entire continents into poverty? And weavers in europe certainly did not get rich either.
Thats quite true. As mentioned, the harm of colonialism far outstrips the harm of comnunism in china.
Are you suggesting weavers in China today are rich, compared to weavers in Europe today?
Uhhh… I dont think so and I’d like to know why you believe this?
The colonialist powers in Europe, North America, and East Asia have a population in the hundreds of millions and general access to wealth and utilities greater than most of the world. Even in the worst parts of the US, clean water is more accessible than in much of the world.
Like, the global capital machine works on a three part extraction:
if we are looking purely at distribution of stuff and money, I feel its not terribley controversial to suggest that a representative person in the colonial core has more than one in a colony.
Now, at what level does having more stuff rise to “not being in poverty” is a topic that I would find a lot more debatable, but even the UN’s self congradulatory and pitiful “2 dollars a day” shows more people hitting that in the imperial core than outside it
Edit to note: I’m not saying “CHINA BAD” here, I’m saying “lifted out of poverty” is not a good metric. Its an inherently capitalist metric. Measuring if people have enough stuff is a losing game against capitalist wealth extraction. Measure instead how good a life is.
That seems more like a lateral transfer of poverty than lifting people out of poverty though.
Its uneven, but its uneven in china also. One of the core contradictions the party recognizes in China today is balancing the need for continued need for economic development with the growing demand for more stuff amongst the wealthier people.
In some ways, although through very different mechanisms, the same pattern has developed internally in China. There are plces where resources are extracted from and people have less, and places where goods are manufectured and people have more. At least the party recognizes that this happens and is a problem, so I’ll give props to that.
But “lifting out of poverty” is a bad metric because it is, as you say, often just moving the poverty around. Historically, the people on the most extracted end do trend better (access to water has been improving globally, for example), but its more a side effect.
and even if it weren’t unreliable, its still not great because it still gives in to capitalist realism. A well paid person who works 100 hours a week as more stuff but probably less freedom than a person who can keep shelter, food, and health on 20 hours a week.
No way boss, capitalism pushed hundreds of millions of people into poverty. Prior to capitalism, most people in the world, and for the past 10s of thousands of years, have lived collectively or subsistence farmed, and lived well. When capitalism pushed people away from being able to survive in these systems and dependent on money and wages, poverty emerged.
And they didn’t transfer laterally the wealth to Europe - they pushed as many people in Europe into poverty too.
wow, thats harsh. I work for a living
Living conditions for the vast majority of pre-modern people were by all measures terrible. We shouldn’t prescribe to pastoralist myths about how people’s lives were better simy because they didn’t live in a capitalist system.
Subsistence farmers lived under an everpresent threat of starvation, in a way that wage labourers in modern and early modern states do not and did not. They lived largely without literacy, access to education and medicine and these conditions left them especially vulnerable to the influence of religion, unjust social hierarchy and widespread accepted violence.
People often go too far in emphasising how poor life was in those systems. It was obviously worth living for most, and tighter, more insular communities resulted in greater social satisfaction than society under capitalism, but don’t pretend that poverty emerged from capitalism and the advent of industrialization. Dealing with poverty and the impoverished was a great concern in the majority of medieval and classical societies, and resource scarcity was a driving factor in many of the great injustices of pre-capitalist history.
It’s not liberty for queer chinese people. And liberty on the condition that you have the correct race, gender, and sexuality isn’t liberty, it’s privilege.
Bullshit to say this about China
And tell me about the liberty felt by a queer kid in America whose parents disown them and kick them out of the house. Marriage rights are good but not the sin qua non of queer rights like neoliberals would have you believe.
I agree, liberty in the west is shit too. Everywhere’s horrible.
This is a copout, but at least your username fits
Do you mean to say that you look down on dronegender people?
I’m not one of these pro-china people but in it’s current state, China has way more rights for trans people than the U.S. There are informed consent clinics in a number of cities and while I’m sure trans woman are discriminated against there there are no laws directly discriminating against them.
Meanwhile the U.S basically bans trans people (and sometimes gay people) from existing in half of this country by land mass. Not even going to say that china has a “good” queer rights record or even one that’s worthy of a socialist country but like China and Vietnam have better queer rights than any other countries in Asia (other than maybe japan) and def in the U.S
There might have been an argument that the U.S was a better place to be queer in like 2018 but we don’t live in 2018 anymore
Interesting. I’m aware that the US is descending into fascism, that’s why I’m trying to help my partner refugee out of there. I don’t think I mentioned the US in my comment, and it’s not like china and america are the only countries. I’d like to hear more about trans rights in china, but first I’d like to hear why you thought the fourth riech was so pertinent to this conversation.
i mean that is a fair point. i guess its just because for the most part the u.s is considered the measuring stick for democratic rights since it is the self-appointed “leader of the free world”. but yeah ofc places like sweden and most of europe have better queer rights than either china and the u.s
im not really a “dengist” or someone who believes that china is socialist. that being said one of my comrades is a chinese trans woman who goes to informed consent clinics in china and visits the major cities there quite often and is able to get alone without any discrimination or molestation by the public at large.
i guess i should bring up some actually sources but i am busy right now, maybe if you poke me ill look at it later.
generally its better for trans people and gender conforming queer people in china but its pretty bad for gender non-conforming queer people a la their restrictions on “sissy boys” which is pretty bad and generally you won’t see talked about on hexbear
How much have you actually investigated this claim?
The characterization of china as state capitalism? You know, I hadn’t ever gatten a first hand source for it, so you did inspire me to check my understanding.
Its a central tenant and a core part of Xi Jiping thought. It was unanimously affirmed at the 20th party constitution convention. Some key highlights:
you can read it yourself in the resolution on Party Constitution amendment
That’s something. Now, what do you mean by “state capitalist”?
My understanding of it is a system of ownership and direction of enterprizes, where the state participates as a capitalist and as managenent, either wholely or in concert with private ownership.
You know, like Lennin meant
edit to add: Lennin was certainly against any private participation in capitalism, but the soviet party did loosen that with parastroika, and the Chinese Communist party started with, I believe, Deng Xiaping Thought, tho I would have to double chetk that it didn’t start earlier
Worth a read, this is from Vijay Prashad’s organisation: https://thetricontinental.org/wenhua-zongheng-2023-2-socialism-3-in-china/
Thanks, that did help deepen my understanding. Its good to see that the current thought remains commited to socialism and recognizes the miss-steps of the past, and is continuing to iterate towards a more equitable future.
Perhaps one day they will achieve it. I certainly hope they do. As of yet, the state capitalism approach to building socialism has had a number of mistakes and limited success, such that I still remain skeptical of it.
You are correct on what state capitalism is, but that flies in the face of the cases discussed. Perestroika USSR is not Lenin’s USSR, but one that suffered from decades of revisionist rot that started before Stalin’s corpse was even cold.
Normal-ass private citizen capitalists are anathema to Lenin’s state capitalist model, the whole point was for the state to take that mantle in order to remove the existence of an independent capitalist class. I don’t think this was correct, and in fact a pretty catastrophic failure of grasping counterfactual class antagonism, but it is what it is.
China’s model is officially called (among other things) “state socialism”, so named because the primary role of the state is not to nullify and supplant the capitalist class but rather to subjugate it at the direction of the proletariat. We can say in a looser sense that things like it’s public enterprise in oil are “state capitalist”, but the PRC overall is not a state capitalist entity.
i cant speak much for the rest of hexbear but at /c/traa (im the mod there) we intend on whacking people that mess with trans solidarity too much with sectarianism. also @[email protected] is our resident always online anarchist so maybe they can provide more insight for you. also pretty sure we have a tranarchist or two on our mod team
Hey fuck you! But also thanks for the shoutout lol
this is when i do the doe eyes to come back into favor
“Hey, fuck you!”, the greating of a true anarchist. Or person from New Jersey. Its hard to tell.
(spoken with love, but also its true)
Coming from the all, chapo and dunk tank form my main experiance of hexbear. Happy far the invite, I’ll subscribe
It depends on the user. I’ve noticed many are just chill and having a laugh at the depressing existence of living under capitalism. I’m enjoying interacting here after lurking without an account.
Just don’t threaten our hexbear cheese wheel stockpile and I won’t throw you in the castle jail!
Depends on the user is sort of the problem tho. sometimes they have a laugh with poe-level sarcasm, which I can identify in my friends, but not with internet strangers. So its scary
Jesus, I know what you mean. I’ve been on this site from the beginning, off and on, but sometimes it’s hard to tell what’s sarcasm, or if it’s a bit. For example:
Definitely a bit: /u/NeeraTanden
Still can’t tell if it’s a bit: /u/LiberalSocialist
There were too many sincere posts for libsoc to be a bit
You have to break through this.
Engaging in having bad takes is a quick way to challenge yourself. And challenging yourself is good. Either you will come out with stronger confidence in the views that you have or you will learn new things and develop yourself as a person.
Break through the fear of participation. There is never any end to learning, and never any end to developing our views. It is necessary to engage in challenging ourselves in order to advance.
So you had a shit take? Who cares. Assuming you’re not a shit who actively avoids admitting when wrong and developing, all will be fine.
Naw, I don’t mind much when someone points out that I had a shit take, and takes the time to help me understand it.
An inbox-destroying number of messages about it is a different beast. At some point, a friendly correction or two changes in to a beast with no nuance or possibility of discussion.
It results in a third outcome: the target stops learning or engaging at all.