(boy’s love writers, so i guess more yaoi then slash) admit i didn’t read the whole article because it seems ridiculous and western reporting on China is like 90% fabrications. someone educate me on whatever this is. is it conservative local governments doing local government shit?
my partner loves this shit especially from China and i don’t want to inform her about some made up BS designed to radicalize the slash and yaoi community against the CPC
He’s doubting RFA’s reporting, not that China has never committed a human rights violation.
If your question is “how can we, the West, analyze and critique this” then the answer is that we cannot based on biased sources
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I’m saying this is impossible to properly dissect with this source. I’m not attacking you lol, I’m trying to explain the disagreement
My bad for assuming you’re from “the West” though. It’s a predominantly English speaking forum so that’s the baseline I was working with
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It’s fair.
Jumping to assume the most nefarious possible motive based on a western propaganda outlet is silly.
Nobody has said it is impossible that China has engaged in persecution of LGBTQIA+ people. But we have pointed out assuming this is an example of discrimination, based on a piece of propaganda, from an outlet with the mission to make China look as bad as possible, without anything close to independent corroboration, is foolish.
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All I know is if you assume the opposite of whatever the US State Department or it’s affiliated media outlets says, you will be right more often than not.
State Department says “Evil SeeSeePee hates the gays and so they arrested a bunch of them” - I will assume the opposite until and unless credible reporting comes out to corroborate the propaganda outlets claims.
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Unfortunately I agree with the person you are talking to here. You have to start at a baseline, and there is no such thing as ‘true neutrality’. You are overall better off when doing a media investigation assuming that any apparatus of the U.S. media arm has misrepresented any given story, particularly when it comes to reporting about China and Chinese law and punishment. Doesn’t mean it’s always the correct position to take sans research, but it isn’t a reactionary position for me because it comes from years of doing this kind of media backtracking. It’s mostly pragmatism at this point, as they can spew lies faster than I can investigate them.
It is applied as a general rule of thumb, but also specifically in this context.
Edit: Not to contradict your experience at all though, There is plenty of queerphobia in China, as you and plenty of others I have talked to on the subject have said. It wouldn’t be surprising if there was some sort of crackdown on slash-fics, but how widespread is it, is it actually a national mandate (is it ‘China’ or just some specific regional politicians bugaboo), is it targeting specifically queer artists or just obscenity in general, these are the kinds of questions I wouldn’t put it past RFA to completely and purposefully underreport.
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I don’t think most people here would disagree with the sentiment of not trusting bourgeois news sources in general. This issue is that pretty much all the news we get, especially from China, is from bourgeois sources, either inside or outside of China.
In that case the difference between ‘reactionary’ politics and ‘materialist’ politics is essentially one of clarity of explanation. Which I am not necessarily disagreeing with, as I think Mao discusses that issue in ‘combatting liberalism’, just thinking in post.
My point is that I would guarantee that pretty much everyone here is very likely operating under something very close to my logic as it is logic generated by the experience of being a terminally online Western leftist. They just aren’t generally as charitable in expressing it as I am.
In my personal understanding, the longstanding ‘hexbear’ (not to place words in people’s mouths, but this was the sentiment in r/chapotraphouse back on reddit in like 2019) opinion is that the actual truth value of the article is irrelevant, especially if you live in the West. The point is not to raise awareness to help queer people in China, it is to manufacture consent for whatever strange foreign policy tact the government is hoping to pull. Therefore, no further investigation is even necessarily warranted. We know where it is comes from, we know why it is coming from there, what else would you have us do, does awareness of the truth even matter for us? So people just shit-post and tell others to ignore it. And you are correct, that might be a reactionary thing to do, but it has been inherent to the posting culture of these people since before hexbear was even around.
I think uncritically swallowing US propaganda without any additional research makes you a convenient lapdog of the empire.
Edit. This is harsh and I have edited my comment. Regardless. I will not assume homophobic intent based souly on a single propaganda piece. If actual evidence of maliciousness exists I am happy to take it into consideration; but if Voice of America said the sky is blue I would look out a window to confirm.
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