![[CW: Transphobic slur] Guy discovers he's pansexual, blames porn for giving him a "fetish"](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/f1a2d2bf-f543-4ad9-aede-55acd279ace7.png){kind=link}
The paper that this is from is the product of a group headed by a self-described “pro-life feminist” and that has retweeted TERFs.
It always sucks when groups with legitimate criticisms of pornography (or anything) dip into bigoted, reactionary bullshit because it poisons whatever valid points they may have made.
Every existing AES state either severely restricts or outright bans porn, while capitalist countries generally allow it. How do we reckon with this? If socialists in power all came to the same wrong conclusion about the evils of sexual imagery, why did they?
This is not me JAQing off. I legitimately do not know how to grapple with this question.
It’s rather simple: there is absolutely nothing in Marxist-Leninist or Maoist or whatever statist communist theory that actually requires them to be socially libertine in any way. You can implement Marxist-Leninist theory, for example, perfectly well while still being deeply socially conservative on issues that do not have to do with the general labour rights of the population - Feminism to some degree is required because that has to deal with rights to labour, and AES states need women to work for much the same reason Capitalist states need women to work, to increase productivity, and doing that generally requires confronting (to some degree) the sexism and misogyny of their population.
That does not require in any sense queer rights, sexual liberation, generally the right to live one’s life in the way one wants so long as it is not harming others, etc - indeed, given the increased focus on the ‘collective’ and on the ‘community’ there is if anything even more incentive for these states to promote and push the social norms that already exist in the population, which have almost invariably been quite socially conservative and scornful of behavior that is seen as disgusting or outside-the-norm, as tends to be the case in most human cultures in general. Simple as that, in my opinion.
Does this imply that socialism is at odds with the liberation of LGBT and neurodiverse people?
Not necessarily, but there are probably about as many difficulties in state socialist governments like that as there are in capitalist ones, yes, the situation is really not that much better. I am personally skeptical of this because I’m horribly burnt out on cishetero-nuerotypicals in general, but in theory under proper stateless communism queer/neurodiverse people should hopefully be able to find each other and make their own communities that are not subject to the rules and arbitrary cultural norms of the cishet-nuerotypical communities around them. For so long as there is a state that is enforcing cultural norms, however, there are still going to be massive problems with achieving the liberation of LGBT and nuerodiverse people, yes, I think that is true.
I do think to some degree individualism, for all it’s many, many, many faults, is better on this one specific issue because of it’s greater focus on the needs and desires of the discrete individuals instead of those of the ‘community’. There is a reason, I think, that the enclaves of greatest queer/nuerodiverse safety are all in the west, and it’s not some myth of progress idea that people just inherently become more socially libertine the richer they are - it is because the West is much more individualistic and atomized, so people are, in a lot of places, much less concerned with whatever the fuck other people are doing and generally less inclined to shunning, for both better and worse. Even these enclaves are obviously under massive threat right now, of course - as said, Capitalist states aren’t really any better, the problems are just different.
I think this all just boils down to the fact that ultimately, there will be no liberation for Queer and Nuerodiverse people for so long as we live under the dominion of cishet and neurotypicals people. Whether that dominion uses red flags or not is irrelevant - we need to be able to have our own autonomous communities without the authority of cishetero-nuerotypicals hanging over our heads for acceptance of our abnormal behavior to be anything but tenuous and conditional on varying degrees of assimilation.
Thank you! This is the kind of in-depth response I was hoping for.
Queer and neurodiverse identities had a range of socially acceptable positions across many societies until the last couple of hundred of years - thanks to the West.
The west literally put gay, trans and neurodiverse people in extermination camps.
Forced sterilisation of people with disabilities is still legal in much of Europe. You can look up the advocacy around the 2020 Spain ban for some awful stories.
I am very much aware of that. I am speaking of the present, I don’t really care about what happened hundreds of years ago on this issue - and frankly people have a habit of being very rosy about those ‘socially acceptable positions’, they still far more often than not forced non-conformative individuals out to the fringes of society, or they provided a few acceptable boxes that one would still be shunned and scorned for acting outside of.
I am interested in liberation, not the expansion in the available amount of ‘socially acceptable positions’, I want the dissolution of the concept of a ‘socially acceptable position’.
That poster has not read any theory
Here is Engels like 150 years ago
I don’t think it goes simply in one way where collectivism necessarily pushes the norms for countries to be culturally reactionary (besides, beyond the West, collectivism is practically a catch-all term for non-western cultures), it does become if left untouched and left to reactionary attitudes.
I’d say if Cuba, Vietnam and Laos, 3 out of 5 socialist nations still living, can change, I would say just as much a collective community can be destructively conservative, they can also be thankfully progressive.
You have to keep in mind, a lot of these AES that were admittedly socially conservative did not live long enough to be in those days to repent, like their Western counterparts, unlike these three here
I don’t know why but I feel you have fallen for some ‘liberal culture realism’ where it seems like the only best way your cultural identity, if not intersectional identity will exist, would be capitalist-derived liberal society. The way you go about this…
Since these 5 years, as an account… it feels like you mostly complain, at this point, I might suggest you logging off, but then again I’ve heard other people share similar pessimistic attitude, regardless of topic, so maybe you vibe in here
Edit:
spoiler
Well, while I can’t exactly relate to you in your own shoes, I’d say good luck to y’all and your struggle for queer and neurodiverse liberation
I do give Cuba props, they have done a great job of combating the reactionary social positions of their population over the last few decades, and their legal rights are very extensive. Vietnam and Laos are doing the bare minimum, and do not impress me in the slightest.
This is ultimately the problem I have - I do not want queer and nuerodiverse people to have to sit and beg cishet nuerotypicals to pretty please give us rights please and thank you, that is a horrible position to be in even if the rights are given and it is the one we will always be in unless we can somehow achieve actual autonomy.
Well that’s a huge red flag
Maintenance of socially reactionary and conservative is incompatible with the stateless and classless objective of communism.
For the majority of their histories, pretty much all AES held a range of social norms that could be considered quite progressive until the recent supremacy of the west. But it would be an incorrect conclusion to think that certain feudal social structures for example were more socially progressive.
A Socialist society (in the Marxist conception) prioritizes societal harmony over personal freedom. Not to a total degree, but definitely more so than under Liberal Capitalism.
Participation in “vices” (pornography, gambling, drugs, sexual promiscuity, etc ) can be fine and fun in moderation. Hell, I partake in many of them, some of them to excess. But it’s also true that any of them can become addictive; that they can disrupt work and family life, they can harm relationships. They can cause disharmony in society.
Within the West, we are drawn to these things as a rebellion against a society we oppose. But in a Socialist society, they can represent a rebellion against Socialist values.
It is a goal within a Socialist government to determine to what extent these things are beneficial to society, if at all. Dialectics should then be used to determine the best course of action to deal with each vice: removing the core disease for which that vice is a symptom; making life bearable without the vice; changing societal norms so that the vice no longer causes disharmony; or just penalizing it out of existence with strict laws.
This sort of socialism is somewhat repugnant to me, I will admit, as unpopular as an opinion as that likely is around here. I am only a Communist because I see it as the best path to maximizing individual freedom, something that so-called ‘individualists’ have repeatedly failed to actually prioritize - Capitalism just sells the aesthetic of ‘individualism’ while still keeping all but the richest of the rich in gold-painted chains.
Prioritizing ‘societal harmony’ over personal freedom is, in my experience, the sort of talk that leads to people like me being ‘penalized out of existence’, which is obviously not an outcome that is desirable to me. I am not interested in assimilation in any respect - I do not want to be beaten into shape by society, but allowed to be myself, regardless of how weird I am.
I’m always reminded of the younger man in the documentary “Loyal Citizens of Pyeongyang in Seoul”, who in his interview says that he left North Korea for China because he was a bit antisocial and just didn’t fit in well with the DPRK’s heavily conformist society. I have to sympathize with him because I’m the same sort of person, and I probably would have done the same thing in his shoes.
But his story to me does not read as a dystopia, but a tragedy - a better society is built that serves well the vast majority, but there are still those who - of not fault of their own - are unsuited for it. You can sympathize with the antisocial man while still recognizing the society is preferable on the whole; and you can recognize the society is preferable on the whole while still trying to improve it further.
I suppose I have higher expectations than simply something that works for the majority - in truth, I suspect that a society that is ideal for cishet nuerotypicals is literally incompatible with one that is ideal for queer nuerodivergent people. Being a queer nuerodivergent people myself, I naturally want to prioritize the well-being of my ‘people’, much as nuerotypical cishet people invariably prioritize the well-being of themselves as a group.
This is why I, in truth, think the only actual solution to this problem is separation and complete autonomy. Even then I am suspect of cishet nuerotypicals allowing such communities to exist - they will always have overwhelming economic power just by numbers alone, it would be very easy for them to acquire coercive control over such an enclave ‘for our own good’ even under, say, an anarchist system.
In truth, I don’t really hope at all. It seems the fate of people like me to always be ‘outside’, regardless of the social organization of the majority - it’s just a matter of exactly how bad it is.