I’m not sure what’s going on over there, but half the time I see a post from there or go into a comment section and it’s just…bad. Like old reddit the_donald bad. Constant trolling, etc. You TS just really bad vibes. I’ve been blocking the communities as they come up, but I’m not sure what else I can do.
The problem is that they are in support of regimes which are currently or historically anti LGBT+. There is no further discussion to be had. Even if they claim to be whatever, they are against us. Their ideology is incompatible with our freedom and possibly our lives.
You cannot be pro Soviet, pro Russia, pro China or whatever else and LGBT+. You would fight against that for the same reason you fight against Nazis. The ecological politics or so are irrelevant at this point. Even if you agree with that, don’t forget that they want us gone.
This is so close to the Nazi bar problem and I fully understand why defederation might be the best course of action. Personally I don’t know what the right call is, but I blocked the instance using the Connect app anyway.
I actually view the rainbow-washing of us foreign policy as a big part of the problem- It allows reactionaries and conservatives to express bigotry and persecute LGBT people under the guise of being “anti-imperialist” or resisting western influences.
Fuck corporate pride and rainbow raytheon shit, America has historically been extremely shitty to gay and trans people and it makes me sick even being associated with their ‘foreign policy’. Just because they ‘legalized gay marriage’ via decree 8 years ago, doesn’t mean they’ve not done real genocides in the past to LGBT people, and aren’t laying the groundwork for doing it again in the future (eg Florida).
Allies marched gay people right back into the concentration camps when they liberated them, for example:
I don’t live in the USA and I am not fond of its politics in any way. It does not matter though. We are trying to survive and flourish with what we have.
What you are saying is that what I am doing is actually just bullshit. I am trying to improve the working environment for other LGBT+ people, I help them with problems they have. I fully support visibility of queer people in their work place and I spend a lot of personal time on that.
You know there are other problems people have which can be solved without a radical and forceful revolution. It is unrealistic and currently a daydream at best. I am actually trying to improve the situation with the cards that were dealt and for some reason you ridicule all of that.
Sorry, but that’s just a bad take. You are barking at the wrong tree.
When the game is rigged, sometimes the only response is to upend the table.
You might not be familiar with queer history in the US, but one of the pivotal moments in it- Stonewall, was an actual riot, with cops beating the shit out of trans girls and everything. It immediately got whitewashed and co-opted by liberal elements to the point where now people routinely have cops at pride!
It’s a convenient fantasy that rights can be won by passively participating and voting. Rights are won by fighting for them, and making people uncomfortable until they give you what you want.
Of course I am aware what is happening, what was happening and where you are heading. Where I live I am doing my part and don’t you dare to ridicule that.
We are gaining ground. Many things got better over the past few years where I live and I will continue to do what I do and support what I can support.
I cannot wait and dream about some communist revolution and look down on others for actually trying. At this point I am not sure if this discussion is even in good faith anymore or if you just want to insult me and others like me.
I haven’t insulted you, at least not intentionally - you seem to think I’m sitting on my hands posting online, I do plenty of real life organizing with other trans and unhoused people. It’s being exposed to people living on the fringes of society that I otherwise have so much in common with that gives me this orientation towards electoralism.
we’re not against you. We are you. We all want a better world and work towards it however we can. Painting us as queerphobic feels pretty disingenuous
Then stop associating with the queerphobic regimes. Simple.
If you side with the people who are against us I have no reason to trust you in any way.
Hey, so I wanted to talk about this point a bit more. I’m LGBT+ myself, and I used to have issues with countries that are definitely not queer friendly. What changed my thinking about this was seeing how so-called progressive countries are far more harmful to us than most countries that have actual anti-LGBT+ laws.
The main example I would point to is Israel. I used to be somewhat supportive because I bought into the fact that they do give us some rights, whereas the main groups fighting for Palestinian people are not friendly to us. However, because of how many civilians are killed by Israel they objectively kill more LGBT+ people than Hamas or the PLA. A few years back there was a major bombing campaign against Gaza in which over 60 Palestinian children were killed. Statistically some of those kids would have grown up to be LGBT+ if they had been allowed to live. Now, being LGBT+ in Palestine is NOT a great situation, but it’s still better to be alive and have a chance to fight for better rights.
This applies even further for NATO and the US military. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed in the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan alone. Many of those people were LGBT+. Statistically the US war machine is the single biggest killer of people like us in the world.
This doesn’t even go into how our countries prop up anti-LGBT+ regimes like Saudi Arabia or the other gulf states. In the Israel example, they will entrap gay men and force them to act as spies, placing their lives in greater jeopardy. The recent burst of anti-LGBT+ laws in African countries are being funded and even written by American churches, churches which are untaxed and thus funded by the US government.
In geopolitics, the only thing countries care about is their interests. No state department cares about human rights in other countries, only that they get theirs.
I’m also replying to your bottom comment, and lots of you generally, but I can shit on everything antilgbt and still hate russia, and not like nato. It’s not some fucking wild thing. Stop acting like people here are fucking ignorant of the world.
Hating Russia is fine. It might surprise you but I, and many other hexbear users, also hate Russia. There are a lot of issues and I’m not speaking to the beliefs of the person you were responding to, but part of my issue is that neoliberals tend to take “hating Russia” as an opportunity to swallow the most ridiculous claims made against them, including actual Nazi historical revisionism and soft Holocaust denial, and then just say “I can hate two things at once!”
This isn’t directed at you – I don’t know your views – but there are a lot of self-identifying “leftists” online who just love to disavow the US but then believe everything the US (or western bloc in general) says about its enemies. I consider this part of that broader phenomenon.
Again, not speaking for the other person or for you, just thought it was worth mentioning.
A significant portion of Hexbears users are LGBT themselves. Your argument kind of falls flat.
No, not really. It is not even special. I mean there are Polish Nazis around. They associate with the same people who will eat their face the first chance they get.
That’s how I see you. It’s the same situation really.
I don’t understand why you associate with those regimes, defend them or even cheer them on. But I doubt there is anything I can say to change your mind.
There is nothing you can say to change my mind, no, because it seems all you have to try to convince me is concern trolling and that’s not gonna help you lol. But I’ll cheer on any country or regime that challenges Western hegemony, NATO, and AmeriKKKa. Not uncritically. But being opposed to the US and NATO is a good thing actually so 🤷♂️
And because you are against those things your conclusion is to support the next bad actor on the world stage?
What a terrible take.
yeah ok
I’d urge you to consider the fact that we are explicitly, radically pro-trans. Our mod team is over half trans people and our userbase heavily skews that direction as well. I myself am trans. And I’m a communist, partially because of the experiences I’ve had as a trans person living under neoliberalism. I didn’t start out as a communist, I slowly drifted that way as a result of learning, specifically learning more history. I’ll recommend the podcast Blowback here, I think all 3 seasons are really good, well-researched, informative, and entertaining. They give a lot of context to various US actions abroad and it’s a very approachable podcast. Season 4 is coming out soon and I can’t wait!
Also, check out Cuba’s family code if you want an example of a communist country being extremely socially progressive. It’s cool and good!
I know that the US are not the good guys. They did and they are still doing horrible things. But the world isn’t the USA.
I never will support an authoritarian regime, especially if they are anti LGBT+. Supporting anything like that is such an leopards ate my face take and on the same level as Polish or Jewish Nazis.
Your role models are horrible. Even if the ideology might have its merits there is nothing to discuss as long as there is so much widespread support for hostile regimes and their politics.
Honestly this whole thing is puzzling me for this very reason. I don’t know how a trans person could ever reason themselves into that position. I don’t know how a sane person could be so delighted to see the suffering of others (e.g. Ukraine or Uyghur genocide) as many comments are implying from your server.
Sorry if I have the wrong idea, but it just does not compute.
If you’re a trans USian who supports NATO living in for example Florida that exact leopards ate my face take is unfolding in real time.
The US is incredibly authoritarian if you don’t have money- which is a large part of why it has such a high prison and unhoused population. I view trans liberation as a part of every one elses liberation, because there’s a lot of trans people who can’t afford gender affirming care, don’t have access to it, and don’t even have access to a safe place to live, and don’t have resources if their family abandons them.
Then by your logic you cannot be pro US or pro NATO and be LGBT. Funny
I don’t know why NATO even matters. Well I know why it is brought up, but seriously I won’t even entertain that.
What makes you think that I even would want to visit the US? I wouldn’t feel safe there for many reasons.
I don’t know what else to tell you. I don’t understand how you can in all seriousness support your position without glossing over all the anti humanistic and anti LGBT+ things going on. I doubt I can say anything to make you understand why that’s a line I like many others won’t ever cross.
NATO encompasses tons of homophobic contries. That and it supports Western hegemony which is harmful to most of the world, including queer people.
Oh, so you are anti NATO then, yes? You are outspoken against every country that has ever had anti LGBT laws? Or are you being disingenuous because you are an anti communist? 🤔
Why would I care about NATO in this context? Unless it is supposed to be sone stupid pro Putin argument or so. I don’t support the military and that should be enough of this.
And yes, I am outspoken about unequal laws. Why should I be outspoken against countries that ever had any and presumely not anymore? That’s a weird take. I don’t have the power to fix the world, but I still have an opinion and a long list of countries I’d refuse to visit.
Why some economical system even matters in this discussion is another point I don’t really understand. I never made my own position clear, because it does not matter in the slightest. I am for a social and democratic system which cares about the needs of everyone equally and it does not really matter how it is implemented or what you call it if it does actually work. Post scarcity communism is the optimal state we could maybe archive in a few hundred or thousand years, but until then we have to take one step at a time. Right now it is a utopic idea and seriously irrelevant to this discussion. Does that sound like anti communist to you? Not that it really matters.
Sorry, but my world isn’t as black and white as you think it is.
This is 100% just me having a Pavlovian response to that word, but is there even the slimmest chance I could interest you in reading Socialism: Utopian and Scientific by Friedrich Engels? Here’s a text online and here’s a great, free audiobook.
You are right that FALGSC is a utopian idea (depending on what specifically you mean) and therefore not relevant, but it’s so not relevant that I wonder why you mention it?
Oh, right, okay, that makes sense. I think you have misconceptions about Marxism if you believe Marxists would not describe their views in roughly these terms. The text I linked discusses that topic in some level of detail, in the broader context of historical social progress and other socialist theorists.
No, I mentioned it because I know that the ideas are compatible. They don’t necessitate each other though. The economic system does not matter if (!) you can achieve the goals otherwise and was a direct reply to the idea that I might be anti communist which is obviously not the case. The full answer to this is much more complicated though.
That “if” does a lot of work, as you allude to, and also happens to be relevant to the text I linked since it turns out politics and economics aren’t separable except as mental abstractions. I’m not a communist because I want co-ops (I think they are fine but overrated by radlibs and a small number of leftists), I’m a communist because I believe the class that should control the state should be the proletariat (by means of democracy, since they are the vast majority) rather than the bourgeoisie (who control it in neoliberal states by buying out politicians and media), and “ownership” of the means of production is secondary to this. The proletariat controls what the bourgeoisie “own” if the proletariat controls the state and use it against the bourgeoisie such that the latter only persist as a class at the convenience of the former.
I don’t see how you think the economic system doesn’t matter? That’s a BIG if
I mean, a lot of us are pro-Cuba, which is AES and has some of the most progressive family policy in the world.
Also, your “historical” thing is just really hard to process. After all, standards change. Hell, within the “West”, LGBTQ+ acceptance is barely 40 years old (and often, as we see, under attack for the gains that have been won). Was the US in the 90’s really that much better for LGBTQ+ folks than the USSR before it collapsed? And while not LGBTQ specifically, the situation of women in the USSR was far superior to the West - especially in STEM..
This doesn’t mean that we can’t (and shouldn’t) judge the lack of LGBTQ+rights in the past – we can and should. However, Cuba’s family policy shows that there’s nothing inherent to communism that’s “incompatible with our freedom and possibly our lives.”
In summary (and here I’ll post my only emoji, since there’s the bug),
Of course I am referring to all the Stalin apologists on your server. Some people really want to argue for the sake of arguing.
So far no one even bothered to justify how they can even pretend to support Russia, the late Soviet Union etc. It’s just a bunch of whataboutism.
It’s context, not whataboutism. Keep in mind that queer interests are working class interests and vice versa.
For example, 40 percent of homeless youth in the US are queer, socialist “everyone should have a home” policies really help the most marginalized queer folks.
Support Stalin: which country liberated Auschwitz? What country wrested control of Berlin from the Nazis? The Soviet Union. “Every Party member must raise his revolutionary qualities in every respect to the same level as those of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin” -Nelson Mandela
Support modern Russia- Russia opposes NATO, and anything that hurts the west is good. Also the current Ukraine government was founded by guys who want to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade … against Semite-led Untermenschen.” Anyone killing Nazis is good, and Russia is currently doing so. “Russians are Asians. They have a completely different culture, vision. Our key difference from them is humanity” -Aleksy Danilov, head of Ukraine national security and defense council.
In both cases, it’s less of “these guys good” but of “the other guys worse.”
Holy hell. This is the most ridiculous take I have read so far.
As I said before supporting those regimes or dictators is incompatible with our lives and our freedom. Therefore there is no further discussion to be had and any trans* or LGBT+ person should fight against it for the same reason we fight against Nazis.
This just proves my point and it’s seriously frightening that it is even a conclusion any person in an allegedly LGBT+ friendly space would come to.
The Soviet Union pioneered many modern trans surgeries and research, particularly modern trans male surgeries. These were done in Riga for trans men with significant dysphoria and the bravery to deal with a largely queerphobic world. Remember to compare two countries from the same time period, gay and trans rights were never even thought of by any society at large in the 50s and 60s.
Also as an anecdote, my grandma was a party official in communist Czechoslovakia for a major union and had a lot of ploy in our region, almost everyone important knew her. She didn’t know what being trans was until I came out to her. She immediately became the most supportive person in my life (outside of my amazing bf) and began advocating for trans and queer issues to her cadre of commie grandmas to great success. I fully believe that if the communists were still in control, LGBT rights would be much better in Eastern Europe. The issue with communists back then was largely ignorance and not knowing that anything LGBT even existed.
Communist countries generally speaking are better on lgbtq rights for their economic development.
You can’t be a capitalist and be pro-lgbt. Cuba, a marxist leninist democracy, has the most lgbtq rights in the world.
Also the reunification threw back lgbt rights in east Germany decades.
The stasi were assigned to defeat subversion by lgbt activists. Their recommendation, which was followed, was to give the activists all the rights they asked for.
The vast majority of us are queer, I’ve literally never been in a more trans inclusive space on the internet (except for the unofficial invite only trans hexbear user discord), I’m in DMs with like a dozen of the trans users from here pretty frequently and frankly without the amazing support from them I think it would have taken years longer for me to realise I was trans, the mods and admins have shown repeatedly over the last several years that they’re completely committed to the rights of trans people - including “provoking” reactionaries within the early hexbear user base into a massive site splitting argument that ended with one of the mods almost getting doxxed and the site getting ddossed because transphobes were angry at being made to respect trans people (we still have our lovely pronouns to this day and anyone who protested got banned on the spot for a while) and at one point there was a reading group on a book of trans liberationist theory by Leslie feinberg that was pushed as pretty much mandatory by one of the old head mods TransComrade69
This strikes me as a silly way to complain about Cuba, since for the other AES states you’d probably just say “currently,” but today Cuba has the most progressive family code in the world, maybe in world history when talking at the national level, along with other merits regarding state support of HRT, etc. We all recognize that the early ban on gay marriage was an error, one for which Fidel Castro himself apologized publicly and encouraged the reversal of!
hi, i live in capitalist florida and my human rights are worth about as much as week-old dogshit. if you’re pro-nato or pro-u.s. then you are anti-lgbt rights
as an interesting note of comparison, china, while historically quite bad on trans issues, has been making pretty impressive strides as of late, even opening their very first gender clinic (for children) a few years back
idk what you’re going on about “their ideology is incompatible with lgbt rights” a plurality of people on hexbear are some variety of gay or trans or both (like me!). i’m pretty sure a solid 70% of our userbase would commit a murder with their bare hands if it could meaningfully improve the station of lgbt people even a single iota
your entire comment is very ignorant. ironically it’s probably closer to propaganda than anything you’ll see on hexbear
I am anti LGBT that’s a new one. I am repeating myself, but NATO is irrelevant for LGBT+ rights and it is just brought up as some form of whataboutism for the 20th time. The world is not the USA, but most of you seem to have a very narrow view. Yes, the US sucks. So far none of you mentioned that you were jailed or killed for being LGBT+ in the USA, even though it is so much worse than the Soviet Union or Russia or anywhere else in the world (lol).
Yes, recently you took many steps backwards especially in Florida and the problems are real, but it is still a better situation than just a few years ago. Get a grip.
Seriously, it is just annoying at this point. It is ridiculous that you believe that you are somehow special and won’t be prosecuted by dictators like Putin, killed by Stalin for “anti communist behavior” etc. I am not saying any of this, because I disagree with communism as a whole, but because the regimes you associate with would never allow us to live and flourish like we do and I don’t want to find out.
Tell me you’re not following news in Florida without telling me you’re not following news in Florida.
Quite literally nobody is saying this. But to be completely fair, Cuba, a communist state, currently has better protections for LGBTQ+ people than any state in the US. ESPECIALLY Florida.
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is this your second ever comment or does your profile display incorrectly for me?
If they are active on some trashbin like lemmy.world or something, then I don’t think we can see those comments
hexbear, with a mod team that is 50% trans, a user base that heavily skews trans, has the largest collection of trans emotes I’ve ever seen on any website, and enforces pronoun tags, is anti-trans.
this does not make any sense. you are writing off an entire community based on foolish (and provably false) preconceived notions.
Do people at hexbear ever show support for Russia? China? Soviet Union? Stalin? Mao?
If there is a single yes then explain me how that does compute? All those countries or dictators are known to harshly discriminate, jail or kill LGBT+ people.
Soon I will probably receive another 10 replies explaining why the USA is bad or some unrelated NATO rant, but so far no one gave a clear answer how anyone in their right mind would want to see any of those regimes to succeed or even come back.
Without ignoring this major problem which is incompatible with our lives and our freedom I don’t know how any sane LGBT+ person would ever want that. I am not sure how I am the foolish one and so far with all the replies I have yet to read one single agreeable take which isn’t some form of whataboutism.
China has clinics dedicated specifically for trans people, especially trans youth ( https://www.gingerriver.com/p/story-of-teens-at-a-transgender-clinic ). I believe earlier in the thread someone linked sources regarding LGBT people in the Soviet Union, I don’t have the sources on hand bu,t I can circle back to this comment when I get home from work.
We do not support Russia, even though our comments are frequently misconstrued as such. Please, understand that criticizing politics in the western world does not equate support for Russia. Also, please understand that Hexbear is not a monolith. We have a wide range of users with a focus on left-unity, but we aren’t a hivemind with the same uniform opinions.
We do not shy away from mistakes that past socialist projects made, we attempt learn from those mistakes to build something better. Many socialist revolutionaries (Che and Fidel, to name a couple off the top of my head), recanted their backwards opinions upon learning more about queer issues.
Am I saying that China or the USSR are perfect? Of course not. They’ve both made mistakes. The important thing is to realize the progress that has/had been made regarding minority rights in those nations.
You know this is the first take I can actually mostly agree with. At least I can kinda understand it. I don’t like the glossing over the human rights violations in support for any of the mentioned people, regimes or countries which let’s be honest is a lot of baggage. Hence I reject to associate with any of that.
Unfortunately your view seems to be mostly unique between all the other replies which either dodge or contradict the question you answered.
Thank you for taking the time.
Hey, no problem! I’m glad we could talk. If you’re ever curious or have more questions, feel free to post in our daily megathreads, you’ll always find a friendly group there!
I know you’re mostly going on vibes but I’m curious if you have intel on Mao’s personal stance on homosexuality. It’s surprisingly easy to find solid evidence that Stalin was decidedly personally homophobic (something which I don’t think anyone at Hexbear denies unless they just don’t know the Lore), but I haven’t found information one way or the other on Mao’s personal stance, just the usual concern trolling from neoliberals.
This is a good way to put it and one of the reasons I’m so perplexed about how queer the instance is. I genuinely don’t understand how LGBTQ+ people can simp for regimes that simply want to/wanted to murder them.
And before someone jumps in with “but America/the West/liberals are trying to do the same thing”… if you don’t think it’s easier being queer in the US, even with all the problems, than in Russia or North Korea, I just don’t know what to tell you.
Posting a reply I just wrote elsewhere:
I’m trans and know people that live in China, their conditions are basically the same as the USA, but slightly better these days because they don’t have a hate mob spreading lies about them in the media and trying to genocide them in select states like America does. In general, there is next to zero awareness about transness in China, whereas the opposite is true in America (they are highly aware and full of hate about it), so it is a different flavor of bad in that regard. The emphasis the government has on accessible affordable housing and food makes that aspect of transness easier than in America, though, the trans women I know in China all have their own safe place to live in.
Now Russia… yeah… they’re doing what those American states were doing federally now. But Ukraine does similar too, unfortunately. Source: I’m Czech and can read/speak most slavic languages by virtue of that, I also have been part of an illegal network to help trans/queer refugees leave Russia and Ukraine. In this organization we would typically help people move to Prague, St. Petersburg (for people who cant leave Russia, this is the best choice of city), and in the east, to China, particularly Shanghai and Harbin (large russian community there). Language barrier and cost of living are huge factors in where we’d help people move.
spoiler
the US is historically anti-LGBT and it’s currently undertaking a genocide of trans people in red states.