I design flags and edit videos about them for fun, for coin, and for glory. Alt account [email protected]
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Honestly, it was very cathartic to write, so I appreciate your sympathy very much. Sometimes I just need to scream at the world, you know. So just reading my attestation is all the support you could give right now.
So I wish you the best as well. All animosity has dissipated. Take care of yourself and stay curious.
I know a closeted trans girl who is very clearly autistic, but who has not pursued an ASD diagnosis because she believes that she will not get treatment for her gender dysphoria if she also has an ASD diagnosis. And so she goes without any accommodations for her autism, just so that she has a better chance of getting treatment for her other major problem. Norway’s state trans health system refusing to treat autistic people is a known problem. According to Norwegian law, this type of discrimination is not supposed to happen, rather anyone who desires to transition should be allowed to transition. And yet it still happens that many Norwegians are denied that right to transition on grounds such as being autistic, and for this the health system responsible gets at most a sternly-worded letter from the government, as if reciting the law makes it a reality.
So this girl I know first pursued transitional healthcare in 2016, but is yet to actually receive any of that healthcare. Rather, the staff in the health system said that my friend needed to get out more, become more outgoing, and earn some money first. That’s what she told me they said. And so now my friend goes with me to this job skills course organized by some shoddy welfare contractor. Several other people who attend this course have gone on absolutely vitriolically transphobic tirades with us two present. And several times, my friend and I attempted to contact the staff organizing the course, to tell them that she was genuinely scared of these vitriolic transphobes, that they were traumatizing her and causing her immense distress. And the staff refused to take any action at every turn, always saying, “When you get a real job, you’ll have to be ready to deal with all kinds of people, even if you don’t agree with the things they say”.
What we could do about the staff’s refusal to take action was to file a complaint to the welfare administration, but it takes many weeks for these complaints to be processed, and this was an issue that needed to be resolved immediately. And who knows what the welfare administration would’ve actually done about the issue, probably the same “sternly-worded letter” nonsense as before, or at best transferring us to a different contractor, which would probably have the exact same issue of being too fond of cost-cutting to actually do anything about the actual Nazis in our midst… Thankfully, though, one of the transphobic reactionaries was kicked off the course when he threatened another participant with violence, another has become a no-show on most days, the third hasn’t brought up trans issues ever again after his first tirade. On top of this, another pro-trans participant has been attending more regularly, and she is principled enough to shut down transphobia even when the staff refuses to do the same. So the issue of transphobia at the job skills course seems to have died down somewhat.
I myself am taking this job skills course because I live in a home with a deeply transphobic relative, and I need to find a well-paying job that will allow me to move out and fund my transition. I already have an autism diagnosis, and I am also non-binary, which means that state healthcare is very unlikely to give me transitional medicine unless I wait and wait and wait and work myself to the bone trying to get them to actually respect their legal obligations. And other options for trans healthcare in Norway are getting thinned out, and state healthcare itself is getting gutted. Which means that I intend to fund my own transition entirely by myself, including by buying gray-market hormone therapy.
The last time I tried scraping together however little money I could for one measly pack of bicalutamide, it was seized by customs and destroyed. Customs even sent me a nice little letter about the dangers of buying medicine from foreign online pharmacies. I still keep that letter beside my bed.
And trust me, I tried voting, too. I voted Socialist Left, because I believed that of the parties that I liked “enough”, that Socialist Left were the most likely to get a substantial number of seats and join the governing coalition, without compromising my political interests too much. And indeed, 2021 was a pretty good election for Socialist Left. But they didn’t end up in the governing coalition, because they demanded that Labor have stronger commitments to fighting climate change. So the current minority government of Norway is between Labor and Center. Which means that even though I tried voting for a party with good LGBT+ policy proposals, nevertheless a number of major government positions in Norway are currently filled by people who have openly expressed transphobic views.
And indeed look at the news media. Hell, look at social media! Ain’t it just great to read a privately-owned newspaper, only to suddenly find oneself gazing at yet more transphobia? Even ostensibly publicly-owned news publications like NRK, they aren’t immune to transphobia, either. And social media, fediverse aside, has all these damned algorithms that keep showing me the most vitriolic shit. And this is the type of stuff that people form their opinions and worldviews from!
So I have “rights” under liberalism. The right to change my legal name and gender marker, the right to transitional healthcare, freedom of expression, freedom of the press, the right to control my body and have a say in the government… But time and time again, all practical experience shows that having rights on paper does not mean anything unless the system in place allows them to mean something. I still consider myself to be an anarchist, but I have a lot of respect for Marxist-Leninists. Both anarchism and Marxism-Leninism understand that liberal “democracies”, “rights”, and “freedoms” are practically speaking worthless. Liberal rights only truly apply to the bourgeoisie, because it was the bourgeoisie who came up with these rights, as they secured their class interests in the transition out of feudalism. Liberalism was a progressive force at that time: it is a progressive force still today only insofar as it sows the seeds of a better permanent replacement, and it is a regressive force insofar as it sows the seeds of a worse temporary replacement.
It is always grassroots LGBT+ activism that brings forth LGBT+ rights. Always. Do not ascribe to liberalism what was the work of some of the most wretched of the Earth, working tirelessly to build a better world despite liberalism.
As opposed to you reducing liberalism to everything you do like, of course. How’s that “sacred democracy and political agency” working out in practice? How are you enjoying your “individual liberty”?
liberalism, the ideology which is actually doing to most for LGBT rights.
Just so that you’re aware: liberalism here refers to the belief in market economies and the right to private property. There is a bit more to liberalism, naturally, but that’s the main point. So whenever you see Hexbears talk about “libs” or “liberals”, rather than applying whatever American definition or preconception of the word “liberalism” that you may have, instead think, “someone who supports the free market and private property”… And indeed, the liberal parties in Russia are right-wing and deeply conservative: “liberal” non est “progressive”. Decouple those terms in your mind. You can have liberal progressives and liberal conservatives alike if you’re not using “liberal” as a synonym of “progressive”, like Americans tend to do.
Furthermore, LGBT+ criticisms of capitalism have a history stretching back even before Stonewall. Harry Whyte’s letter to Stalin in 1934, which criticizes the regress of gay rights in the USSR while also analyzing the position of gays in capitalism at the time, stands out. Leslie Feinberg (1949-2014) is another important figure in the history of LGBT+ communism. You might find Feinberg’s Lavender and Red to be particularly interesting, as it lays out a history of the intersection of LGBT+ rights movements and leftism.
I can only assume it’s for reasons such as:
Language: there is a very large Russian/FSU diaspora in Germany, while there is only a very small Russian community in China; and LGBT+ Russians are more likely to be proficient in English than in Chinese. It then follows that integrating into society and accessing services would be easier in Germany than in China, since Germany has a high English proficiency, and a large enough Russian population for many services to be provided in that language, or for Russophones to be able to find community on the basis of shared first language. German itself, of course, is also more similar to English and Russian than it is to Chinese.
The state of LGBT+ rights: rights for LGBT+ people are better in Germany than in China. This is not to erase the strides that China has made in terms of LGBT+ rights, nor the difficulties that LGBT+ people face in Germany and the very real possibility of regression as right-wing sentiment grows in Germany; but it’s also just a fact that LGBT+ Hexbears obviously acknowledge, that it’s in many ways just easier to be LGBT+ in the core than in the periphery or semi-periphery. It sucks, but that’s the way it is, for now.
Ease of applying for asylum: becoming a refugee in China is more difficult than becoming a refugee in Germany. Last I checked, China does not officially grant asylum, and has all refugees living in the country processed by the UNHCR. Germany, on the other hand, does grant asylum. While it’s obviously a good thing that people can flee from dangerous situations and seek asylum in another country, and China really should grant official asylum to refugees; one should be aware that systemically, the imperial core’s policy towards refugees is a form of economic domination over the imperial periphery, meant to provide themselves with cheap labor and drain the capital of the periphery.
China does not need more communists: it’s not like it’s a bad thing to move to China by any means — there’s a lot of good that can be done there — but it’s also not a bad thing to move to the imperial core in order to fight the good fight “in the heart of the enemy”. That’s more people to do activism, more people to join and contribute to organizations, and so forth: if we want to build socialism around the whole world, obviously we’ll want to live around the whole world.
I dunno, these are just some of my thoughts on potential reasons why an LGBT+ Russian socialist might prefer to take refuge in Germany rather than China… Like, it could’ve also just been that Kaplya just stated the name of the first country Kaplya thought of, and the comment wasn’t meant to be read into to this extent, but either way it’s a good writing exercise.
My thread on Hexbear
Here’s the thread I made on Hexbear.
https://hexbear.net/post/1232126
Four comments as of me writing this comment:
Putin really is a big fan of the Russian Empire. He’s even doing his own pogroms that will inevitably lead to a brain drain.
Russia is so fucked. People who identified as not-religious has been constantly falling from since 1991 from 60% to 20%. Orthodox Christianity from 30% to 70%. Russian youth (16-29 yo) are 75% religious (62% orthodox) https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2014/02/10/russians-return-to-religion-but-not-to-church/
Man, fuck Gorbachev for allowing the USSR to be dissolved by the west.
[an emoji titled “russia-cool”, depicting a burning Russian flag]
So yeah, if you’re looking for Hexbears criticizing Russia, then there you go.
Actual quotes from Hexbears that I got when discussing Russia with them:
“Those reactionary shitstains [the Russian government] has little to be proud of.”
“Russia is extremly Reactionary […] thats why Russia has a Real Problem with “White Supremacy” , [and] no problems with hunting down LGBTQ+ […]”
Now I don’t exactly see anybody on Hexbear presently discussing this particular bit of news about crackdowns on LGBT+, but I’ll go post about this news on Hexbear and see how the people there react. I have a feeling it’s going to be consistent with my previous experiences discussing Russia with Hexbears, which is also going to be the reaction that I’d expect from an instance that skews heavily LGBT+.
From Wikipedia:
“A bondage suit, also commonly called a gimp suit, is a form-fitting garment designed to cover the body completely […] A bondage suit is sometimes used in BDSM to objectify the wearer, or gimp, and reduce them to the status of a sexual toy, rather than a sexual partner.”
Of all the industries to profit from bored ape NFTs, I was not expecting white cane manufacturing to be one of them.
If we want to be even more proper, they’re Avars, Lezgians, Nogais, Tabasarans, and so forth. Dagestan is a very culturally and linguistically diverse region. Its name means “land of mountains”, which is just about the only trait that all the peoples in the region share.
(also, Cauc-as-us, or Caucasia or even Kavkaz if you prefer. No relation to “caucus”. Sorry if that’s pedantic.)
Jewry in Dagestan has existed for many centuries as well, though post-USSR a majority of Juhuro — the Jews of Azerbaijan and the North Caucasus — have now immigrated to the United States and Israel. We can only assume specifically to escape the economic woes and growing ethno-religious strife that came with the last lowering of the red flag.
Мир и процветание горским евреям! Горские евреи одни из народов Кавказа. У них есть и красивый язык и великолепная культура и долгая история, как все народы той прекрасной части нашего мира. Поэтому берегите их, ваших братьев! ТО настоящие обычаи народов Кавказа! ТО настоящая душа ас-сират аль-мустаким!
И почему люди ненавижут колонисты, которые выходели оккупацию? Всем сердцем приветствовайте их домой, конечно, где не могут помогать оккупацию! Они - наши друзья тоже! Помогите их, и они не помогут оккупацию. Приветствовайте их, и из них “до свидания” не слышно!
Позор антисемитам! Антисемитизм - это социализм для дебилов. Не забудьте это.
I’m saving this one, hell yeah, I love it. That chud was absolutely obsessed with Joe Rogan, acting like that guy was the new messiah, all while he went on and on about “the corrupting influence of media from America”. It drove me up the wall…
Some chud I used to see regularly: “Blackrock is funding WOKE in the movies in order to change pubic opinion!!!”
Meanwhile, actual conservative billionaires:
Egdiretteb’s law, obviously
Honestly, if Twitter suddenly cracking down on T&A ends up causing another X-odus to the fediverse, then it is mildly amusing that the “masto” in “Mastodon” is literally from the Ancient Greek word for “boobs”.
That’s an insult to dollar stores
I’m replying to my own comment to add: I’m barely even joking about this. Which is to say, actually having personal experience of living in a country can be very useful in discussions of it, but we also need to be aware of the limitations of lived experience.
For instance, I live in Norway, and I’ve met people here who didn’t know that they had suffrage in local elections, and who didn’t know the difference between national and local elections. I’ve met autistic people who know nothing about local autistic advocacy, trans people who know nothing about local trans advocacy, and I’ve met more people here who sincerely believe in “plandemic” conspiracy theories than who are even remotely aware of what Norwegian state-owned corporations have done in the global south. These people will go on and on about how “Americans are all idiots!” while simultaneously demonstrating a complete obliviousness to the actual political issues in their own backyards.
So sometimes people just don’t know what they’re talking about, simple as that. Lived experience should be respected, obviously, but it is not absolute nor immune from criticism. There are plenty of things that I’ve learned about the country where I live from people who have never set a foot in it — even things that feel so basic that I’m really embarrassed to admit that I didn’t know them.
And we need to be particularly aware of this effect with regard to those who were children and adolescents in the USSR. Those who turned 18 when the USSR dissolved would be 50 years old now. Those who turned 18 when Stalin died would be 88 years old now. This obviously doesn’t mean that you’ll have no opportunities to chat with people who lived a significant portion of their adult lives in the USSR, I have done this myself… And that guy basically said that living in the USSR was the time of his life. I suspect that this might’ve had something to do with how he was a popular musician in his home republic, and how he was a comparatively young adult in the 1980s. Nevertheless, it was interesting to learn how one of his songs was actually a load of anti-evolutionist nonsense, which to me indicated that Soviet censorship was perhaps not as strict as a lot of people say it was… And again, seeing a grainy video cassette rip of this guy on Sukhumi’s Red Bridge pointing to a giant monkey plush like a big ol’ doofus, shows how not everybody in the USSR was the sharpest tool in the shed (sorry, Anzor!)
So if you find some 30-to-50-something year old who says that thon actually lived in the USSR and is therefore qualified to speak about it… Asking for thons lived experiences of the USSR is like asking a zoomer today for sy lived experiences of Dubya and Obama. Not to say that a child’s perspective is worthless, just that it will be a child’s perspective. Meanwhile, ask a 60-or-70-something year old, and chances are pretty good that you’ll get nostalgia goggles of young adulthood. Ask an 80+ year old, and… Where the hell are you gonna find one of those? Especially if you can’t speak Russian, your access to authentic Soviet perspectives is going to be severely limited.
On the other hand, if you ask someone who left the USSR for political reasons for thons experiences, then that’s like asking someone who left the USA for political reasons for thons experiences: you’re gonna hear an overtly negative perspective, and maybe some of that perspective will be useful, but that perspective is also not going to be representative of the majority experience, and it could’ve even been twisted by outside factors (obviously praising your new country is gonna increase your mobility in your new country!). Paul Robeson said of the USSR that being in that country was “the first time [he] felt like a human being”.
So, the best way to be educated about the USSR is through scholarly analysis, which takes into account the lived experiences of a broad range of people as they recounted their lives at the time, and which also considers the factors that the individuals might not have been aware of. We should always be open to hearing people out, obviously, but we also always need to remember that nobody has all the answers — and so sometimes the 14 year old white Yankee really does know her shit better than the guy who actually lived in the country.
How exactly do I revoke my consent?