I'd be vegan for ideological reasons but I think with my dietary restrictions and issues it'd kill me.

I too believe the fascists should lose, that's why I voted third party instead of staying home

[-] CommunistCuddlefish@hexbear.net 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

If everyone on the ballot supports genocide or is silent about genocide, then there's nobody to vote for and the decision is made for you.

If anyone on the ballot denounces the genocide in Palestine and their record backs the denunciation up, then you should vote for them.

None of my local Dems said anything against the genocide so I didn't vote for Dems down-ballot either.

Tlaib is the only member of the so-called far-left "Squad" that has not endorsed Harris. The other three members — U.S. Reps. Ayanna Pressley from Massachusetts, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York — endorsed Harris in July after Biden announced he was dropping out of the race.

I missed that Ilhan had endorsed Kdolf Hitler, very disappointing.

[-] CommunistCuddlefish@hexbear.net 10 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Based. I voted Green right before the VP said dumb shit about China and trans people so kinda regret voting Green over PSL now, but I also wrote in revolutionary slogans for every other position so they couldn't fill them in for me.

The Democratic Party is for Nazis, I'll give carve-outs to Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib for being against the genocide but everyone else supports the genocide and is therefore a Nazi.

Really all it would have taken for me to vote Dem down-ballot was a condemnation of the Party for doing Nazi shit in Palestine. That's not a huge ask. But every Dem on my ballot was either too chickenshit to take a public stance or their public stance is "more genocide please" so of course I don't want them to win either.

There was some bad personal loss during lockdown, but I still miss lockdown so bad. I desperately needed the break from work and having the bonus unemployment actually cover shit instead of how unemployment normally is was gave me time to heal some from years of overwork and burnout.

But they'll never do it again. Even if H5N1 takes off they won't do anything like that again

Would you support him banning AmeriKKKan and Isn'treali developers too, given that their countries' war crimes are far grander in scale, horror, and devastation than Russia's?

They really did. It's been disheartening, alienating, and frightening to watch. I can't be friends with these people anymore, who don't care about genocide, so there go a lot of people I befriended in school.

[-] CommunistCuddlefish@hexbear.net 13 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Disclaimer: you're going to get wildly differing answers because Islam is not a monolith.

Edit: also thank you for asking this respectfully

At least in my experience with the Muslim side if my family, no. There's maybe a little "oh that's different and a little weird, but if someone's queer that's just Allah's plan for them and it's not our place to judge", but there isn't the hatred and condemnation you see in conservative christian cults. It can break more along political lines.

It also gets weird with regional variation, like where my family is from trans people are kind of normal. I was even taught that transness is generally accepted religiously as long as the trans person is straight (so since I'm lesbian that doesn't work as well for me, but whatever).

Generally I consider the "Islam is violently queerphobic" shit essentially a form of colonialist blood-libel to paint Muslim cultures as backwards and oppressive in order to justify committing horrible colonialist and imperialist violence against them, and it's victim-blaming too. Queerness is very culturally dependent -- what is feminine in one culture may be masculine in another. Colonizers exported their queer-bashing ideas during conquest, cracked down on queer communities as removed, reshaped mores in the places they conquered, and now these "enlightened" colonizers have the audacity to condemn the people they colonized for bearing those scars. Of course we're "behind the times" -- you fuckers made us be!

There is certainly room for and indeed a need for conversation and struggle around queer acceptance and liberation in different Islamic cultures, but that's going to vary greatly by region and is less of a theological question and more a cultural question (of course there's a give and take between theology and culture). Islam in Iran is wildly different from Islam in Pakistan is wildly different from Islam in Saudi Arabia is wildly different from Islam in Algeria, and even within those places there is a great amount of variation

I truly think libs are beyond being redeemed, and that even goes for the more "progressive" types who appropriate the label of "democratic socialist" like Bernie and AOC.

I used to think they could be moved left -- after all, many did -- but at this point I no longer believe that. So many of the libs who "moved left" under Trump, at least that I know, are now ride or die for Kdolf Hitler. If they won't grow a soul and reject liberalism because of genocide, they're beyond rehabilitating and aren't worth my time anymore. I'd rather engage with the politically unengaged than with the politically engaged liberal. The unengaged can be woken up to the truth, the engaged liberals see the truth and don't care.

No matter where you live you're wasting your vote if you don't vote third party

[-] CommunistCuddlefish@hexbear.net 31 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

1st third: Yep

2nd third: lmao what

3rd third: lmao what

Material conditions? Never heard of them.

Basically every successful Communist revolution immediately instates major literacy programs after the initial victory to empower the populace. It isn't a prerequisite.

71

I don't know where exactly to post this but the memes comm seems fitting. I've gone from finding the capitalist Democrats offputting and funny in how pathetic they are to genuinely horrifying and terrifying. There's something -- a lot of things -- fundamentally very wrong with them. If you look at the actual impacts of their actions it's clear they are murderers, and I feel like I'm going insane when people act like they're these friendly folksy wholesome heroes. I can see something that others can't! Isn't that insanity? But I'm the one who sees clearly, sees the truth, and they are the ones who are deluded and have their vision clouded by Capitalist lies: the lie that it is safe to get Covid over and over, the lie that genociding Palestinians is good, the lie that America is a force for good in the world instead of the most evil, tyrranical, and murderous empire to threaten the world since the Nazi Third Reich broke its teeth trying to take on the Soviet Union.

The King in Yellow imagery is perfect, and crossing that with king charles' beautiful bloody portrait that reveals what blood-stained eldritch monsters rule over us makes for a good effect.

Biden's smile is not the reassuring smile of your cozy safe grandpa, it's the creepy smile of a serial killer.

74

I mean I do care about it in the sense that I care about not wanting the US to become even more of a white supremacist Christian fascist imperialist genocidal autocracy than it already is. But I don't see anything I can do about it that would be even remotely effective. And more than that I just don't see anyone else who actually cares about it enough to even try to do something about it so what good is me "caring" even supposed to do?

Now I do see a lot of white liberals (and "progressives", and even some white people who consider themselves leftists) panicking about it. But then when pressed about what is to be done to stop it, their solution is always, always, ALWAYS just "vote for (Genocide) Joe", which tells me they don't actually care about Project 2025, they just want to use it as a cudgel to get me to vote for the same ghouls who are blowing up Palestinians and who have let the spooky scary Republican Party get this powerful. But when I point out to them that they obviously don't really care because they aren't interested in addressing the roots of fascism or doing anything real to stop fascism, they get all indignant and upset at me, call my takes "disturbing", "monstrous", "privileged", "psychotic", and after getting that a bunch I do have to wonder if maybe I just have some massive blind spot and am getting this wrong. But they won't tell me what is actually factually wrong about what I say.

Besides, what do they want me to do about it? They can't seriously expect me to back a party that loves genocide, but they won't suggest anything else.

Idk I just feel like the majority of people I see raising a fuss about Project 2025 and the threat of a "Trump dictatorship" are comfortable, privileged white liberals, usually white queer liberals, who have never had to worry about the government targeting their demographics until the last few years. I and every other queer poc I know is like, "oh, they're going to go after me for another thing? Sure whatever, put it on the pile of other shit they throw at us, what's one more? Now let's get back to trying to stop the fascist Democratic Party from stealing money from our paychecks to bankroll a genocide against some of the actual most vulnerable and oppressed people in the world. If Project 2025 actually lands here we'll fight that too, but we will NEVER throw away our solidarity with the wretched of the earth to preserve what comfort we do have."

Please Hexbearians, tell it to me straight: Is Project 2025 something we actually need to pay attention to and if so what can we actually do about it? Or is the furor over it just a bunch of fragile white people panicking because they might finally be lumped in with the rest of us and finally get targeted for oppression too?

44
submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by CommunistCuddlefish@hexbear.net to c/traaaaaaannnnnnnnnns@hexbear.net

Turns out I’ve got major gender problems and wish I had been born a girl. [Removed as it was pointed out how problematic and doomer my sentiment was] I'm well past puberty and am very masculine-looking. The dysphoria’s gotten worse over the years though, or maybe the gender affirming feelings have gotten more tempting as I’ve stopped being in denial so much and have explored a bit of transitional stuff — shaving, doing my hair different, less masculine clothing. But I just don’t know what to do next.

I’m terrified by the idea of trying to hormonally transition, mostly because I have a very high sex drive and am very attached to it. Dysphoria about the shape of my genitals aside, I do want my dick to keep getting hard, I want to still be able to orgasm from using it, and I want to still produce cum for my partner to enjoy. From what I’ve read hormonal transitioning would eventually disable all of those, and I feel for me that would be even worse than not transitioning.

I’m also pretty strong and muscular, and I don’t want to lose that muscle and put on a bunch of fat from going on estrogen, which I’ve seen happen to couple friends who’ve transitioned.

So, hormonal transitioning looks too risky for me. Still, I thought maybe I could still achieve a good degree of comfort with non hormonal transitioning, maybe getting rid of all the body hair for a start. But when it comes to non hormonal transitional steps it all feels so incredibly daunting. I’ve been “blessed” with prodigious masculinity, the ability to grow hair all over my body like a beast. Shaving is a pain and I grow hair so fast that my face turns into stubble in less than a day after shaving.

Nonhormonal transitional steps I’ve considered: Shaving all over. Problem: I’ve only shaved a bit of my body and it gets really old and time-consuming really fast.

Laser hair removal. Problem: Supposed to be very expensive, and it works better on people with white skin and light, fair hair, neither of which have I (EDIT: CORRECTION: works better with dark hair so at least I have that going for me). In particular the at-home DIY machines do not work as well in those use cases, and without training there’s more risk of damaging your own skin trying to do it.

Electrolysis hair removal: I had a bit done in the past on my face. It was not super effective, takes a lot of sessions, and was very painful even with a local anesthetic cream. On top of that, while I might be able to have it done on much of my body it is impossible to have done on my face because of Covid — I’d have to take off my respirator and that’s not happening unless I could find a practitioner wearing an N95 in an isolated room with heavy air filtration.

More drastic nonhormonal steps — facial feminization surgery, breast implants — are even more inaccessible because at this point very few healthcare practitioners give a shit about Covid so it’s nigh impossible to see a surgeon or even get to a gender care clinic. Regardless, the uncontrollable hair is a big barrier — I wouldn’t want to consider other options before getting it dealt with in the first place.

Everything seems so painful, risky, and dauntingly expensive to the point where idk how I could afford it anyway.

Any advice would be appreciated. Thank you, comrades.

26

I remember seeing someone mention there is a Mastodon instance for Hexbear, but I don't remember what it was called. I got kind of bothered by the one I was on (kolektiva.social has a lot of cool rad people but it also has too many unserious people with "tankies fuck off" in their bio), and someone I want to follow blocked the entire kolektiva instance because he was getting harassed by too many racists from there, so I'm looking to make a new account. Hexbear has proven to be the best part of the fediverse I've found so far and it'd be nice to make my new Mastodon account there too.

15
submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by CommunistCuddlefish@hexbear.net to c/chat@hexbear.net

I watched the show Avatar The Last Airbender for the first time in my life in 2019 on a friend's recommendation. I was somewhat bothered by it seeming appropriative and orientalist, and how it was basically a show about Western imperialism set in the exotic trappings of Eastern and indigenous cultures. Still, I enjoyed those trappings and the martial arts choreography.

But then early on it did anticolonial freedom fighters dirty yet that was portrayed as a good thing, and that bothered me. I chalked it up to children's cartoons in the mid-2000s having to follow certain tropes about violence and didn't just ragequit there. Then when they did the blood-bender dirty I rationalized it away with "well they're kids who haven't been imprisoned and tortured like she has, they haven't learned that you have to be merciless when fighting merciless colonizers." Then when Aang did some bullshit peace-policing and manipulated Katara into not taking the justified revenge she so clearly needed yet that was portrayed as a good thing, I figured hey, I wasn't raised Buddhist, I don't know how this spiritual system handles things, maaaaybe this is in character... (but it was still very shitty of him to get in her way). And I was very close to the end and wanted to see how this played out and I'd already excused a couple bits of lib shit so I kept going.

Despite those flaws, I persisted in watching and found it pleasant and enjoyable enough. When it ended I wanted more. But the very first episode of Legend of Korra was an utter disappointment -- the liberatory heroes of the first series had just implemented neoliberalism and the setting was some uninspired 1920s new world shit, and the political questions that were being set up seemed utterly boring. So I stopped watching and dropped the entire franchise like a hot potato.

Well, apparently the ATLA story gets continued in comics and I was wondering if they're at all good or not. I want to read them because I want them to be good -- there's enough fun stuff in the first series that it could be and there are questions the show left unanswered I think I would like to know. But at the same time the world-building and rank liberalism in some of the plots make me fear that I would just ruin what enjoyment I got out of the show the first time around. If they have even a drop more of liberal "killing your oppressors makes you worse than them" bullshit in it I feel like it would sour any positive feelings I had about the show.

I guess now that I've typed it out the answer is obvious: Don't bother, there's better shit out there to read that isn't written by politically illiterate culturally appropriative liberals. Still, I'd welcome any comrades' thoughts!

7

I got turned on to CZM with Behind the Bastards and It Could Happen Here Season 1 (aka "Robert Evans doomposts about the impending 2nd American Civil War"). I would have placed them as quite anarchist which, while not my preferred leftist tendency, I still respect as an important faction in the fight for global liberation and international communism.

I had assumed they were leftist and they do seem to be most of the time, but there are some weird and jarring... exceptions.

  1. The ICHH host Mia Wong seems to have this unbridled hatred for China. I'm no expert on China and I would not want to live with Chinese working conditions, but they seem to go beyond reasonable critiques into full on animosity.

  2. They've been pro-Ukraine without acknowledging that the Ukraine War is a NATO-provoked proxy war, and that continuing to fight over territory that doesn't even want to be Ukrainian has just gotten so many Ukrainians killed for nothing, in a doomed fight. That's fucked up.

  3. The subreddit-logo for Behind the Bastards (yes I know I should leave reddit-logo but there's still niche stuff I like there) appears to be full of Blue MAGA Vote Blue No Matter Who Is Being Genocided shitlib fascists. I only joined it recently and it was jarring to get dogpiled and downvoted for saying such basic things as "fuck Genocide Joe", etc. These fans seem to have Trump Derangement Syndrome. Now, I know CZM has no official relationship with the subreddit, but I can't help feeling it's a mark against them that they attract this crowd! OTOH, CZM platforms a host who's explicitly pro-Palestine and anti-Zionist so maybe judging them by their fanbase isn't fair, and the problem is just that reddit-logo shitlibs have exactly 0 critical thinking skills

27
submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by CommunistCuddlefish@hexbear.net to c/electoralism@hexbear.net

Got my primary ballot and there are actually a lot of alternatives to Genocide Joe. Voting is a fuck and not worth much of my time so I figure I'd fast-track by asking other people their opinions:

Eban Cambridge (https://voterguide.sos.ca.gov/candidates/president/president-dem-cand-statements.htm#cambridge) : Pros: Weak support for a one-state solution, legalizing weed. Cons: Still wants to fund Ukraine, weirdly specific about taxes, niche opinions about things I don't care about like making family court more gender balanced -- I thought it already was and this could be a MRA dog whistle.

Orb Mommy (https://marianne2024.com/meet-marianne/): White woman capitalist and I'm very distrustful of the woo woo language, but she says some cool things sometimes so maybe she's the one if there's nobody good on the ballot.

Dean Philips: White man capitalist who "both-sides" a genocide. Lol no.

Armando "Mando" Perez-Serrato (https://presidentmando.com/):

MANDO Demands Biden Stop the GENOCIDE

MANDO is the "ONLY" Presidential Candidate calling for a Ceasefire. Vote for Mando as your way to Protest Against the GENOCIDE of 30,000 Palestinians & to support a #CeasefireNow. Biden/Kamala/ Netanyahu are War Criminals. GENOCIDE JOE, how many BABIES, CHILDREN and MOTHERS did you kill today in GAZA? Mando will refer Joe Biden/ Kamala/ Benjamin Netanyahu to the International Criminal Court for War Crimes & make sure Hunter Biden goes to prison for Federal Crimes. #GenocideJoe #ComplicitKamala"

That actually answers my question! Mando is clearly the most based Democratic candidate and will get my vote. But I'll go through the rest of them anyway.

Frankie Lozada (https://lozada2024.com/): Seems to pay lip service to universal healthcare and caring about immigrants, but not a single word about foreign policy so not him

Gabriel Cornejo (https://www.gabe2024.com/about-gabriel): Has basically no platform or stance on anything, pass.

Cenk Uygur: Desperately trying to stay relevant. No.

Jason Palmer: I'm not voting for a white man business owner.

Genocide Joe: There is a special place in Hell for anyone who willingly provides aid to genocidal monsters. You heard it here folks, those who vote Biden are going to Hell.

Write-in: They throw write-ins away so while I would love to write myself or Comrade Fidel in, I'm leaning against it given that Mando is saying what I would say if I were officially running but I'm not old enough to be president according to the constitution.

Uncommitted: Weak-ass shit that sends a weak message.

Edit: So it turns out that Mando is a whack imperialist who supports NATO, is rabidly against China, wants to decrease immigration. Maybe the only good thing he said is sending Genocide Joe to the ICJ. Unfortunately I was so taken with that idea that I already filled the fucking ballot out in pen and sealed it. The message the libs will take is "huh, I guess people really loved his hard stance for NATO, against China, and against immigrants!"

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CommunistCuddlefish

joined 1 year ago