The comments are even worse. The fact this rhetoric made it even there genuinely makes me feels terrible. Are even other transfems this liberal or is this fed work?
The comments are even worse. The fact this rhetoric made it even there genuinely makes me feels terrible. Are even other transfems this liberal or is this fed work?
If trying not to get legislated out of existence is liberalism then yes all transfems are this liberal. It’s incredibly upsetting to me that this person is being labeled a reactionary for promoting nuance for the trans community’s safety
A Democrat gives a gun to a Republican and the Republican points it at your trans comrade’s head. The Democrat tells you that if you don’t vote for him - a genocidal, warmongering racist indistinguishable from the Republican but for the fact that they won’t be the one pulling the trigger - the Republican will shoot your comrade. Do you give in to their blackmail? Do you allow your comrade to be used as a hostage to intimidate you into voting for the Democrat thereby signaling your approval of all of the imperialist warmongering and genocide that they are engaged in abroad as we speak?
This is not an either-or situation, no matter how much they push the psy-op to make you believe that it is. You always have a choice to not allow yourself to be blackmailed like that, to not vote for evil at all instead of merely choosing the “lesser evil”. You can help your trans comrades in a myriad other ways, protesting alongside them, showing the bourgeois state that regardless of the outcome of their joke elections people will come together and not allow individuals from marginalized groups to be victimized, joining orgs in your local area that fight for trans rights, organizing mutual aid and learning/teaching self-defense to protect vulnerable people in your community.
You don’t have to sell out queer people in the global south (who are also victims of imperialism just the same as non-queer people in the global south are) to protect queer people in the imperial core. You can reject the entire Kabuki theatre of Republicans vs Democrats, you don’t have to buy into their false dichotomy, you don’t have to continue voting for one monster to keep another one out. You can choose to be a principled anti-imperialist and socialist. You can choose real working class politics, and if you still really want to vote you can vote third party to show your disapproval for both of the bourgeois imperialist parties and their genocidal, warmongering policies.
the analogy would be more accurate if the Democrat promised to stop the Republican, wins the election, and then lets the friend get shot anyway
Yes? If my friend is going to die otherwise of course I am going to do as they say. Calling bluff and metaphorically trying to save my friend afterwards is just taking a stupid risk.
And you’re not selling out anyone by doing that. Other than keeping your conscious clearer, voting for none of them is functionally the same as voting for both. If both parties are the same, nothing you do will change what’s happening in South America, and especially not what has already happened in there.
This is not a directing the trolley to the more people track to save your friend on its way situation. This is denying someone having a heart attack in the trolley any help because that would give it legitimacy.
I’m not familiar with communist lifestyle in US, but I’d imagine participating in capitalist system for the sake of survival would be considered fair game. Why not the same for the political system?
And that’s how terrorists win.
Do you not understand that by giving in to their blackmail you are incentivizing them to continue to pull the same trick over and over again, every election cycle? Once they know it works they will do it again and again, and each time taking more and more away from workers and you will still vote for it every time because all they have to do is put up someone even worse on the other side.
Do you not understand that they are both two sides of the same coin? That both parties advance the same bourgeois ruling class interests? That a vote for one is effectively equivalent to a vote for the other?
Democrats need Republicans as a boogie man because their own policies just keep getting worse and worse, and the only way to get people to still vote for them even as Democrats continue to allow their material conditions to deteriorate further is to make sure the other side gets more and more comically evil. The only result of this is a race to the bottom. Voting for the “lesser evil” is what enables fascism.
For the historically inclined i will add that Germany went through a similar “race to the bottom” process in the 1920s on their path to Hitler, which is captured vividly by Berthold Brecht’s lyrics in Ernst Busch’s “Lied vom Klassenfeind”:
You can look up a translation online if you don’t speak German (i’d recommend an annotated version because the names mentioned are obscure if you’re not familiar with the politics of 1920s Germany), but the jist of it is that when you are always voting for the “lesser evil” the next choice you will have to make just gets worse and worse.
Wtf? This is ridiculous. What kind of a person sacrifices their friend just to make a point? If both parties advance the same interests and it is certain that one of them will win how are you okay with risking your friends life just so you can maintain moral superiority??
What kind of person gives their approval to genocide?
A genocider.
The genocide has already happened and will continue happen regardless of what you do. Nobody cares about your ‘approval’ of it other than you and other communists who think the same. I hate to use that phrase but this just screams virtue signalling to me. Instead of doing the thing that might help you do the thing that feels good
Why do you make voting decisions based on things you can’t affect by voting and when it comes to things you can affect by voting its only ‘direct action’?
Edit: just to clarify, I meant disapproval as in not casting or casting an invalid ballot that’ll get lost among millions of others. Not something that’ll actually get your voice heard
As a trans woman, get the fuck outta here with that logic. It disgusts me whenever I see people, of my community no less, playing that “lesser evil” game when said evil is championing the cause of genocide and pushing the world to WW3. Anyone promoting “safety” at the price of genocide and imperialism deserves every bit of evil they direct onto others coming home to roost.
What’s the winning move then? In my understanding the two party regime is too entrenched in us to change, so every move leads to the same unfavorable outcome (in your view anyways). That’s not a good mental state to do anything
Edit: Also it’s not like you’re exchanging (un)safety for genocide. This isn’t a choice between those two, it’s a choice between whether one or both will happen.
The winning move is understanding that no one in the “good cop, bad cop” political theater is your friend, that no true, permanent safety and security will be offered by that system, and figuring out how to either insulate oneself from the issues of the system, or getting the hell out- not accepting a role as part of the problem.
I agree it’s not a good mental state. But we have to work within reality. And this is the reality that everyone in the west who is a minority, who is not part of the bourgeoisie, etc. faces.
The winning move is not to play their game.
Yes, it’s not a good mental state for us. But it’s the uncomfortable truth.
What does it accomplish other than making you uncomfortable?
I will not lie to myself and say that this is fine, just because it makes me uncomfortable since that doesn’t solve anything. The fact that both parties are the same is not the end anyway, since there’s a way out. But that requires social uprisings.
Thinking outside the box for starters. You’ve been gaslight into thinking that the only valid form of political action is to participate in the very system that cause the oppression you want to get rid of and as a result can’t seem to consider anything outside of that scope even though there is so much more you can do, even though every single minority rights you have in the US was won by fighting against the system and not by participating in it like liberals like to pretend.
Look at the civil right movement, look at what Martin Lutter King jr and Malcolm X did, look at what the black panthers did, look at what the various labor movements did, look at how the LGBTQ+ community fought back against the lavender scare.
Despite what the capitalist state would like you to believe, exactly none of the rights these movements secured for you today were ever won by voting, all of them were won by fighting for them on the ground.
She literally is saying that not voting for Biden is transphobic. She is just being disingenuous. We as communists don’t see voting for the lesser evil as a good long term plan, and not as a good short term plan either. Nobody is saying you are not allowed to vote for Biden, but she’s trying to guilttrip everybody. And I’m a trans woman, and I disagree with her. She’s not speaking for me.
I understand why it wouldn’t be a good long term plan, but for the short term I don’t follow your logic. What’s the short term plan you communists think is good? Either conservatives win and oppress trans people, or biden wins and trans people live marginally safer. I assume the plan isn’t for trump to win and hopefully push more people to left, so it must be that enough people will vote for biden. But communists can’t help to increase the odds?
Also, she’s not saying not voting for biden is transphobic. She’s at best saying banning people for saying that is transphobic.
And a personal point, if you don’t vote for biden and conservatives win I can’t imagine how you wouldn’t feel guilt.
And a side note: None of this makes her a reactionary. Is this just a generic people we don’t like sub?
You’re right, for the short term I totally understand why some people want to vote for Biden, but don’t think he is marginally better than Trump. He doesn’t care for trans rights so he will not do anything to better their situation, except shallow words. Under Biden, trans rights aren’t good either, and they are still oppressed. Maybe Trump is worse but they are both bad. I don’t think that communists will feel guilty for not voting Biden.
Correction: Either conservatives win and oppress trans peoples, or biden win and let conservatives oppress trans peoples.
Reminder that Biden let the right overturn Roe v Wade and affirmative action and never did anything about it even though he has the power to, if he isn’t even willing to block the right from oppressing cis women and POC they won’t do it for trans peoples either. That’s the problem with your logic, you insist that the Democrats will keep the right from advancing their anti-minorities program when literally, there is no reason whatsoever to believe they will.
It isn’t either of those. The plan “plan” is to resist oppression directly instead of hoping that a pawn of the oppressing system will do it for us. Protest, strike, sabotage oppressive apparatus’ operations, create or join organization(s) to fight back, in one word: class warfare.
That’s how you secure rights for minorities, that’s how it always worked, no minority right has ever been won by voting hard enough, all were won by making the capitalist state so scared of us that they had no other choice than to give concessions.
Could not have said it better myself. Putting your hopes in a bourgeois politician to protect you is always a recipe for disaster. We can only protect ourselves. As the song goes:
Il n’est pas de sauveurs suprêmes
Ni dieu, ni césar, ni tribun
Producteurs, sauvons-nous nous-mêmes!
Décrétons le salut commun!
Why is this point so hard for liberals to grasp when it is so painfully obvious from even a cursory glance at history?
Why can’t you do both?
Because we don’t want to support a literal genocide for an illusion of security and because electing Biden wont stop the right from oppressing minorities as we keep telling you.
The genocide will happen regardless of how you vote. And it’s disingenuous to imply the right will oppress minorities just the same regardless of who’s elected. Any bit of security is that much better
You fuckin disgust me. Death to Amerika.
THAT’S LITERALLY WHAT HAPPENED DURING BIDENS’ CURRENT TERM THOUGH?!!! Like, hello? Were you fucking hibernating when they overturned Roe v Wade despite the Democrats being in power and Biden did exactly nothing whatsoever about it?
For the last fucking time, electing Biden won’t protect any minority, there is 0 security to get from them.
On the other hand did you see them take the opportunity to restrict abortion federally? How is it so hard to understand that between the people who are actively taking away your rights and the people who are doing nothing about it, the second group is the smarter choice? And as I understand, the reason roe v wade could get overturned in the first place is because dems lost the 2016 election and the Supreme Court got stacked with conservatives. I don’t see how it is favorable for that to happen again neither.
Vote Biden sure. But Biden won’t help us anymore than he helped ciswomen. I believe we’re over 60,000 rape related pregnancies now and Biden hasn’t done anything to help.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but voting for biden involves voting for the local politicians who are ultimately in charge of whether abortion or being trans is banned or not right? (I might be wrong, is there a seperate local election in the US?) I guess if you live in an area where leftist candidates have a chance to win vote for them but otherwise that doesn’t track
You can vote down ballot every 2 years, this is separate from voting for the executive position. I live in Los Angeles, so we have a proposition system too (and downballot is frustratingly two Democrats that are Repubs, because commiefornia). Ideally communists would feature in electoral politics too, probably masquerading as dems, but in addition to unions, this shouldn’t feature as much as organizations that parallel the government, providing support to the people that the government refuses.
E: I actually vote down ballot every election because I was raised by dems. I protest the president vote, but my state always goes blue, so it votes for the dem pres anyway
Nuance is when you give your approbation to genocide on the delusional hope that the party who has always let the right do whatever they want wont let the right do whatever they want this time around.