I’m hoping this doesn’t start a fight, I’m just curious what the political orientation is of this community. I grew up in a liberal (in the American sense) family, and I identify now as a socialist, though a lot of the liberalism I grew up in has stuck with me, like interest in LGBTQ and women’s rights, environmentalism, etc. Wondering where people here land?
I never understood LGBTQ people who identify as Leninists or ML given these regimes heavily persecuted LGBTQ people and continue to persecute them to this day (China for example)
Do not fucking dare to speak for us with your ahistoric ideas about gay rights. No communist government during the 20th century was worse than western countries on “equal rights” for LGBTQIA+ people. Because we didn’t have equal rights anywhere in the world in the last century. Are you a literal fucking child that you’re unaware of that or are you just the typical liberal that completely lacks object permanence and immediately forgets how he has actively supported the oppression of marginalized people once the mainstream consensus has moved on? That doesn’t mean the USSR’s treatment of gay people wasn’t atrocious, it means that we were legally persecuted everywhere. The USSR threw gay people in jail, so did the USA and West Germany and the UK. Gay men were actively hunted by the law in the bourgeoise democracies you love so much. Germany had forced sterilization of trans people seeking a name change until 2011 (btw the DDR didn’t have a law like that on the books). Fuck you for thinking us having at least some basic human rights has always been the status quo of the enlightened west since forever, i still have to struggle against my goverment and my healthcare system all the damn time while my people are being actively singled out and villified through multimillion euro harassment campaigns backed by our conservative party. How do you fucking dare to explain to me how free i am under this joke of a system? Democracy is a fucking nightmare when you’re a minority of less than 1% of the population. Majority rule means minorities are treated like dirt. Free speech means that the majority is free to shout us down while we are being silenced.
Regarding your idiot takes on the DDR, backed by wikiepdia links (lol) that you, in typical liberal fashion, didn’t even read, the “equal rights” situation was actually better in the DDR, were gay sex was legalized in 1968 instead of 1994 like in the West, which only had a partial legalization a year after the DDR and retained a significantly higher age of consent for gay relationships, as judges and lawmakers back then were firmly convinced the being gay spread by social contagion and that vulnerable young men had to be protected from predatory queers trying to turn them gay. That was the actual legal consensus about gay sex throughout the mid 20th century in Germany. If you knew ANYTHING about gay rights in Germany, you’d be aware of this, it’s a key part of queer German history how the West perpetuated fascist views about queerness. West German conservatives were thinking out loud about throwing gay people in camps in the 1980s. But you aren’t, because you’re a clueless het shit trying to straightsplain queer rights to queer people.
10/10, no notes.
i never understood LGBTQ people who identify as liberals given these regimes heavily persecuted LGBTQ people and continue to persecute them to this day (the U.S. for example)
Yeah it’s not like the countries with the highest acceptance and rights of lgbtq people are liberal democracies, lol
I have a lot of thoughts about this as a trans person, and a communist. For one I strongly dislike the way liberals try to use queer people to excuse their war machine - it just gives the cover for bigots abroad to veil their misogyny and transphobia as “anti-imperialism”
Liberals are not doing queer people a service by making them the political football. You’re not helping queer people in the countries you sanction and lay waste to either. Stonewall was a riot. If you’re poor, queer people have not been really “accepted” in places like the US until relatively recently- it took 9 unelected people in robes to allow gay marriage, and Obama “evolved” on it.
As a trans person, the outcome that would directly benefit me the most from political action would be the immediate abolition of private property - ie decommodifying housing, and guaranteeing healthcare- nationalizing the for-profit healthcare. It’s no good to me that my rights are “accepted” in the west if I can’t afford to fucking transition and I’m living on the street. But I guess that would be “authoritarian”
No it wouldn’t, given they didn’t have rights in the Soviet Union, which abolished private property.
I don’t really buy into tankies complaining about “the war machine” when they back Russian and Chinese imperialism. Something tells me you don’t care about trans rights when Russia directly claims to be fighting LGBTQ people in Ukraine.
If my options are 1. unsafe living situations at home 2. unsafe living situations in shelters 3. unsafe living situations on the street + police encounters, a khrushchyovka sounds pretty fucking good.
What good are rights when you’re poor and hungry with no fucking housing?
edit- NATO has couped/overthrown a lot of governments before Ukraine.
CW: SA
spoiler
In Greece during the coup "the US ambassador in Athens, Phillips Talbot, complained to Maury ((Athens CIA chief) one week after the brutal change of power that the US coup represented ‘a rape of democracy’. Maury answered: 'How can you rape a whore?
I mean you’re not poor and hungry if you have time to argue with me on Lemmy on a Star Trek space, unless you just have really bad priorities? Also you dodged the point about private property abolition not doing anything for trans rights…
I’m on hexbear, and I didn’t dodge the point you just didn’t make one worth addressing xaxa.
Having stable housing makes a big fucking difference to even being able to transition. Speaking from experience.
Yeah you dodged it because you have no response.
Shut the fuck up you dumb cis shit. You’re telling trans people that we don’t care about our persecution in Russia. You are lecturing us about our legal and economic situation without understanding ANYTHING about the problems we face. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.Fuck you. Fuck you.
The Queer liberation movement has long been spearheaded by communists. Harry Hay, Sylvia Rivera, Rudolf Klimmer, and many others, were all communists who, in some form or another pushed forward the cause of queer liberation.
On the whole, Socialist states in the 20th century were no better or worse on queer issues than any liberal democracy. We were treated like shit pretty much everywhere. They were not special in this regard.
A notable exception was East Germany, which, though not without flaws, had a far better queer rights track record than its Western capitalist counterpart:
You can check out the new Cuba family code. It was heavily discussed and amended at the lower councils and then passed through to the national level. Also, Fidel did have some conservative beliefs regarding gay people in the past, but he later took back what he said and supported LGBTQ+. The DDR was also wildly progressive on the gender, sexuality, and feminist front. I have heard that the DPRK is slightly culturally conservative in the aspect that public displays of affection are generally frowned upon, but LGBTQ+ are not persecuted, but neither outright celebrated. Similar position to China and Vietnam.
The takeaway for LGBTQ+ rights is not corporate sponsors, pride parades, and consumption – but if they are free to be themselves. Are they committing sewerslide in droves? Being targeted by death squads? In many parts of the West, many of their rights are being rolled back or threatened, especially in Amerika. Not all AES support for LGBTQ+ community is perfect, but that would be due to the limiting factor of traditional, conservative views held by the majority population – not socialism.
I’m aware of Cuba’s recent laws regarding LGBTQ rights. Cuba for decades sent homosexuals and trans people into internment camps because they were “deviants” and only recently has enacted LGBTQ rights because it’s been forced to open up to the rest of the world after the fall of the Soviet Union. Also it’s just one example, whereas the largest ML country, China, heavily represses anyone who is not heteronormative. So does North Korea. So did the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc. It was in liberal democracies where LGBTQ people first gained rights and have the strongest rights.
hi i’m trans and i live in florida, where are my human rights you dickhead? where are your precious liberals?
They’re not in communist countries. And Florida is led by illiberal increasingly anti-democratic figures that are directly inspired by Russia and even China, so what a terrible example to counteract my point, lol
“inspired by Russia and even China”
dawg what.
AmeriKKKans are incapable of realizing the evil is coming from inside the house
The GOP is directly inspired by the homophobic attitudes in both countries. Have you been living under a rock?
Conservatives have been homophobic and racist since there has been a conservative. “Actually China did that”
“here is why it is China’s fault for Amerika being rascist”
You don’t even believe this yourself.
There is absolutely no way that you don’t understand that the GOP’s anti-queer stance is 100% homegrown, and you’re only making this ridiculous argument because you’re incapable of admitting that your previous comments on this topic are all bullshit.
Do better and just take the L, this isn’t fucking reddit.
" Americas problems are caused by foreigners"
Scratch a liberal, a fascist bleeds.
lmao are you doing a shitty bit, what absolute fuckin nonsense, absolving western homophobes of responsibility and agency while simultaneously peddling a racist conspiracy theory, get a grip you shitlib
https://www.guancha.cn/politics/2019_08_21_514563.shtml
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-lgbt-un/china-urged-to-take-action-on-lgbt-rights-after-backing-u-n-changes-idUSKCN1QO1MU
https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E6%80%A7%E5%B0%91%E6%95%B0%E7%BE%A4%E4%BD%93/19500488
https://issuu.com/undp-china/docs/undp-ch-legal_gender_recognition_-_
Homosexuality in China and Does China Ban the LGBT movement?
China has trans healthcare. You can find LGBTQ stuff on Bilibili or Baidu. China has a three-no policy. No approval. No disapproval. No promotion. As for you – no investigation, no right to speak.
As for Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc goes…
Article 121 (the “anti-gay law” passed by the head soviet) was designed as an anti-pederasty law. If you look at the law text,it mentions or at least implies pedophilia.
To quote The Sangha kommune:
“Article 121, despite its curious reading, appears to have been designed to protect Soviet society from the menace of child abuse and paedophilia, although it is recorded that Soviet academia was interested in the practice of homosexuality from a medical perspective, and attempting to ascertain its root cause (with a number of early Soviet researchers following the Czarist assumption of aberration). This did not mean that homosexuals were persecuted – far from it – the general underlying trend in the USSR was to end all oppression, and facilitate the integration of the individual into the collective.”
https://thesanghakommune.org/2016/12/28/the-ussr-and-homosexuality-article-21/ There’s no objective, verifiable evidence of a persecution of homosexuals in the USSR
To quote Sangha Kommune again:
Research By Adrian Chan-Wyles PhD
"The fact that the Soviet Union was considered enlightened and tolerant demonstrates that these laws were not applied as a deliberate attack upon homosexuals – although in the 1930’s, certain homosexual activity became associated with specific counter-revolutionary activity. In this regard, homosexuals who strove to bring-down the USSR were treated as ‘criminals’ – just as their heterosexual colleagues. Soviet records demonstrate that Joseph Stalin… was responding to various police reports about contemporary counter-revolutionary activities (usually within major cities). "
"Modern (capitalist) Russia has now imported much of the anti-Soviet Cold War disinformation fabricated by the US (and her allies) between 1945 – 1991. As a result, many modern Russian authors side with the reactionary forces of capitalism and adopt this pseudo-history as their own (apparently not realising its ‘racist’ anti-Slavic nature). The above article is anti-Soviet and is designed to give the impression that the USSR carried-out a continued pogrom against homosexuals – even though its author continuously states that there is no evidence to support his claims. Indeed, the only evidence the author can muster is ‘Western’ Cold War authors whose work – as pieces of official fiction – contain no Russian language sources. However, I have quoted this piece where I have been able to verify the facts within Russian language sources. It remains informative on two counts, 1) as a narrative history of homosexuality in Russia from early times to present, and 2) as a study of modern (Russian) anti-Soviet literature. I have found no objective, verifiable evidence of a deliberate persecution of homosexuals in the USSR. "
https://thesanghakommune.org/2017/01/05/the-ussr-and-homosexuality-part-iii-rsfsr-article-154a/
LGBTQ+ being put into camps in Cuba is also straight-up an anti-communist myth.
To say that “It was in liberal democracies where LGBTQ people first gained rights and have the strongest rights.” is ridiculous. AES countries had LGBTQ+ rights first and continued progressing, The DDR was fairly progressive in the 1980s and continued to progress – similar to the USSR and Eastern Bloc, however, I discussed the famous article 121 above how ""homosexuality was recriminalized. Meanwhile, during the Red Scare in Amerika, gays were specifically investigated because they were seen as more likely to be communists. In many parts of the West, it took until the late 20th and early 21st centuries for the advancement of rights for the LGBTQ+ community.
https://www.economist.com/china/2023/05/25/why-the-communist-party-fears-gay-rights
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_history_in_Russia#Soviet_Union
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Cuba#Homophobia_and_labor_camps_during_the_1960s
So no, reality doesn’t conform to what you’re saying.
It was less progressive than West Germany/West Berlin, and only began tolerating LGBTQ people (not granting them equal rights) after opening up more to the West near the end of its existence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_the_German_Democratic_Republic
Sources: LE FUCKIN ECONOMIST – “journal that speaks for British billionaires.” It’s just more anti-China absurd nonsense. AT LEAST TAKE A LOOK AT MY BAIDU LINK WHICH IS LITERALLY WRITTEN BY A PERSON LIVING IN CHINA. It summarizes things nicely, and you could just translate it.
do some more digging than just wiki.
the sources that wiki links for its claims are: " #37Archive from Resource Information Center Washington D.C in 1998. Their claim of punishment for sodomy and homosexual relationships being 5 years of hard labor was States News Service 28 May 1991; The San Francisco Chronicle 18 Oct. 1992. I found the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper article, but it was paywalled, so I will have to see if my local library has it, or if I can get access to it.
Then the book “Hidden from history: reclaiming the gay and lesbian past” from pages 347-364 “Russia’s gay literature and culture :the impact of the October revolution” by Simon Karlinsky – gay scholar of Russian literature at Berkley. He often contends that the “Marxist Leninist ideology is at odds with homosexuality.” Why does he contend that? Good question. He says the ideology goes against homosexuality. Which is weird, because he isn’t arguing about real world socialism, but the ideology, which is synthesized from many socialist authors/works/theories but isn’t inheritly anti-homosexual
The actual wiki states " there were several high-profile arrests of Russian men accused of being pederasts. In 1933, 130 men “were accused of being ‘pederasts’ – adult males who have sex with boys. Since no records of men having sex with boys at that time are available, it is possible this term was used broadly and crudely to label homosexuality”
And I am getting a 404 to the 43rd resource
The book “Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia: The Regulation of Sexual and Gender Dissent” by Dan Healy is referenced a lot. He actually is pro lenin, (and trotsky?), but very anti-Stalin, and uses a lot of primary sources/narratives about sexuality in the USSR.
" “In the first criminal code they composed after the revolution (1922), the Bolsheviks decriminalized sodomy. They did so because they were intent on secularizing and medicalizing the language of sexual crime. Old Testament concepts like “sodomy,” “fornication,” and “feminine honor” were purged from the law. In their place came a modernized, gender-neutral language to describe a sexual revolution. Henceforth, the sexual inviolability of all young persons was to be protected by the state, and the maximum self-determination was offered to both adult men and women: freedom to marry and divorce without having to explain why, freedom to engage in harmless consensual sexual relations without the interference of a moralizing higher authority. Homosexual relations were not explicitly welcomed by the Bolsheviks and raised to an equal status with heterosexuality. Yet they were regarded in principle as no great vice. The majority of Bolsheviks perhaps subscribed to the view that homosexuality was a medical condition, probably (if they read the popular sex advice tracts that they sponsored) a hormonal anomaly, and perhaps one day science would be able to control or even eradicate it. In the meantime, the legal persecution of homosexuals found in Britain and Germany was seen as irrational, reactionary, and bourgeois.” — Daniel D Hailey
and from the wiki ITSELF!!
“Soviet legislation does not recognise so-called crimes against morality. Our laws proceed from the principle of protection of society and therefore countenance punishment only in those instances when juveniles and minors are the objects of homosexual interest (emphasis mine, because that is literally what I was fucking saying)”
—Sereisky, Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1930, p. 593
DO YOU NOT READ? Even from le ant-commie wiki. 5 short paragraphs are all for “Stalin era”
and again, this is in THE FUCKING 1930s. THE BASTION OF “LIBERAL DEMOCRACY” IN AMERIKKKA IS LYNCHING BLACK PEOPLE
Also, the thing about Cuba is again, a myth. I am not going into that. But you can’t use WIKI AS A SOURCE. They are a compilation of sources. Can give a good run-down on things. Generally bad for political stuff. And there is a lot more shit I wanna say but I have to go to work very soon.
ALSO YOUR FUCKING NONSENSE ABOUT THE DDR IS STRAIGHT-UP INCORRECT. LIKE ACTUALLY STUPID. LIKE THE MOST STUPID THING I HAVE HEARD ALL DAY. AFTER HEARING THAT, I AM ENDING THIS CONVERSATION.
I am going to touch le grass. not bother replying to Kautsky
Even the wikipedia article on LGBT rights in Germany, despite being very slanted and anti-communist, admit that West Germany had no national progress in gay rights until after the cold war. Saying the West/West Germany was more progressive and tolerant is just straight up false.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Germany
The US didn’t decriminalize homosexuality until 2003, decades after most of the Eastern Bloc. You’re kidding yourself.
Wikipedia links got thrown around like it’s the absolute truth source, people would frown upon Wikipedia link back then and linking them is more of a reference. For sensitive topic like politic, people should praise a big doubt if it’s from Wikipedia.
Furthermore, linking and not even quoting relevant points is just lazy and low effort.
You’re just straight up lying about Cuba, shut the fuck up.
It’s something that often people will point to how communists heavily persecute LGBTQ people but ignore that the people who fought for LGBTQ liberation in the western world were Marxists, MLs, Maoists, or worked very closely with those groups.