this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2023
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I remember once building a nice charity program that would make meals for homeless people. I had deluded myself into thinking I was building some kind of revolution or whatever.
I had a book club where we all read theory, and it basically was just a tacked on addition to the food charity.
It was really stupid, but it also broke my heart when a guy deliberately sabotaged it because I was a tankie. It was set up in a very level way where we all basically took turns being the coordinator. He intentionally did nothing and told everyone that each role for that week (driver, cook, etc) was filled. Then when the day for distribution came he laughed about how it wasn't going to happen.
I had to buy like 10 pizzas that day, and I remember not having internet because those pizzas were my bill money. The group kept functioning for a while until it fizzled out, but not because of him.
Most people of all political leanings were willing to help me with my stupid idea, but not that guy. I think about that a lot.
Mutual aide is not really the issue with tankies, the problem is the authoritarianism. Mutual aide can be very effective when done properly. For example, anarchists tend to answer the question of "leeches" by giving them the resources to self-actualize, and if the "leech" does not care to do that, they can be kicked out of an anarchist community.
Maybe those are problems with the ideology, but its not with the people who believe it. I've met a lot of people who have very incoherent beliefs. Nobody bullied them and so they absorbed the sane beliefs of the group.
I really just don't think exclusion or hostility are useful unless people are dangerous. A Nazi makes Jewish and gay members of a group scared. A tankie really doesn't because 90% of the time they're gay or trans.
Then I haven't even gotten to how a lot of people join extremist ideologies because they are lonely and need friends. So when you combine that with how small scale local activism is, kicking safe useful people out of a group is just abusing the socially inept.
I am a queer person, and I am scared of tankies because they support the creation of an authoritarian state which is fundamentally incompatible with the ideas queer liberation and self-determination.
I'm all for communism. Every day is a new day for me to witness and live the horrors of capitalism. Hell, I got laid off a couple months ago and I may be facing homelessness soon. I could go on a tangent here but it's very clear to me that we need a different system soon. But I don't want to build a "fiscally leftists, socially conservative" society. I want it all left.
It's not just that, they support existing regimes that are known to be queerphobic. China is having its own trans panic right now, and their government is contributing to it, so when people support states like that it's not just that they don't support queer liberation, but it seems like they specifically want queer people gone entirely. It seems like they agree with fascists when it comes to queer people.
I get you're trying to make a big point here about China, but within the last 3 years they opened a multidisciplinary trans healthcare clinic in Beijing and additionally a well known TV host in the country is transgender and this is easily findable even within US new sources. It may still not be culturally fully accepted but I don't see how the government is doing anything against us when they're literally opening trans healthcare clinics. Hell there were trans expat teachers who used to move to China for teaching before the changes in education laws for expat teacher licensing.
The US and UK are also opening more trans healthcare clinics, and I don't think any reasonable person would argue that these countries don't have trans panics, or the the governments aren't capitulating. So, the existence of trans healthcare clinics doesn't really go against what I'm saying. The same goes for whether a single TV host is trans.
But as for whether the government is doing anything against us... they literally are. Just last year, the government cracked down on the sale of HRT drugs. This matters especially in China because of the severe legal barriers on every stage of medical transition. When it comes to being prescribed HRT drugs, you are required to undergo psychological intervention, have no criminal record, and have parental consent (even if they're an adult).
This is exactly what I'm referring to when I say the government is capitulating to a trans panic, a phenomenon that you can't so easily separate from social climate and cultural attitudes.
I recommend you see what Chinese trans activists are saying on this, because they say that the government is increasingly cracking down on their activities, they're getting erased from both official and unofficial media, social media is increasingly taking down trans accounts, and the idea of trans people being a "social contagion" is becoming increasingly popular among nationalists. In general, I would trust queer activists over any other group on this one.
There is nothing about the core ideology of Marxism Leninism that is opposed to queer rights. Actually there are a lot of queer people in the community at large who are communist and findable on YouTube or Lemmy. I'm one of them.
I'm not here to teach everything and I trust you know enough to be able to look up more as you wish. If you want an example of an ML nation that is pro queer look up the Cuba Family Code changes made recently. They're among the most progressive in the world and help to guarente rights for trans people, lgbt, and more. Additionally China has a large trans healthcare clinic first of its kind recently opened in Beijing and a well known trans TV host. Vietnam also has a vibrant lgbt community and even in North Korea homosexuality and cross dressing to my research are not criminalized despite lacking public interest/support.
The days of old are over and new communist nations can and are doing better to ditch reactionary tendencies especially around queer rights.
The common thread of 'authoritarian' countries isn't communism or fascism. It's having significant opposition. Almost always from the US.
No Communist supports suppression of dissent. It's a countermeasure to foreign interference. It doesn't exist because tankes feel like authoritarian states work better but because the US has an extensive and well known track record of breaking international sovereignty laws and installing fascist regimes by force.
Communists didn't want to be slaughtered for wanting to abolish poverty. Therefore every real life communist is a tankie, either because they understood that class war is war or because they're buried under capitalist soil.
This suppression of opposition doesn't have ideological basis. It's an emergency measure in a time of war. Hence why even every CAPITALIST country opposed to US interests is 'authoritarian'.