#like I need this abolished from existence

[hungergameshyperfixation]

Absolutely cursed idea: Haymitch being called ‘Mitch’ by his peers or family.

[uncanny-tranny]

Honestly, attachment to sex rather than gender as a social construction won't create a utopia without the subjugation of one's presentation, background, or experience from existing. Recognizing that sex and gender are both socially constructed and while they sometimes inform one another, they won't always, and that trans people absolutely can attest to this and are integral to making change for a better world are insurmountably important. If your desire for a "better world" coincidentally doesn't include us, what you desire isn't a better world where people are free - it is subjugation by a different name.

[thebendsbyradiohead]

having a wedding genuinely sounds so scary to me like it's one of those personal hell scenarios the devil would concoct specifically for me if he existed

aside from the fact that i'd be agreeing to a legal contract that involves the state in my personal relationships & that i'm highly likely to break in the future (with an unnecessarily bureaucratic & long process may i add), doing it IN PUBLIC in front of multiple people for whom i have to provide food, entertainment, and place, sounds like a nightmare

and that's not even getting into all the details and bs that people i see who are getting married have to sort out, it's just incredible stress for the stupidest reason on earth

[schattenhonig]

The A in LGBTQIA+ doesn't stand for aspec because they're not repressed!

(please read the disclaimer at the end of this post)

Ummm, excuse me? Would you mind telling me what your definition of repression is, then?

Because I feel repressed when a doctor asks me about my sex life, and if I say I have none, it gets marked down as a symptom without being asked if I suffer from it.

I feel repressed when my gyn tells me I can't get a hysterectomy yet despite losing so much blood on every period that I need to take iron supplements all the time, because I could change my mind about not wanting children (which is a whole other post, I know, but it's most likely linked to sex).

I feel repressed if I can't use dating apps or platforms because my sexuality doesn't even exist there, and the one time I tried, I got called names because I didn't want to meet for because it was clear where this date would go, despite my explicit "what I'm looking for".

I feel repressed when I think about how recently a paragraph was finally abolished in my country that considered sex a vital part of a marriage, basically entitling the spouses to having sex with their partner (both gender neutral, because entitling people to having sex with somebody else by law is wrong. It's basically a rape permission).

I feel repressed when I can't watch any film or show without it being about love and/or sex, no matter if it fits the narrative and furthers the plot.

I feel repressed when I plot my own stories and automatically put a romantic couple in there as main characters, even though I have no idea why this would be important for the plot. Not even my own stories, my own thoughts are mine.

I felt repressed when I was asked accusingly in a relationship if I wasn't missing something before I even knew asexuality as a spectrum was a thing, and having to lie about this being a side effect of my medication instead of genuinely not feeling attracted to someone in this way.

I feel repressed when I can't tell people I'm not sexually attracted to them because they will take this personally no matter how well I explain myself.

I feel repressed when everywhere I look there's advertising relying on naked skin, suggestive posing and objectification. Why are expensive cars still presented by women considered beautiful and tempting? It's not like that's necessary to convince people of spending so much money on a thing that gets you from A to B. Couches with women in smart dresses and high heels. That's not what a normal person looks like on a couch. But the worst is a truck in the town where I live: it's from a small fruit and vegetable stand, so whenever I see it, it comes from the warehouse, delivering groceries. On it is a woman clad in very little, presenting fruit. I'm sorry, but why? Does a misogynistic picture convince you of the necessity to avoid scurvy?

I feel repressed when I tell people and get the answer "you just haven't found the right person yet", because there are two possible assumptions from that point: I'm either not trying hard enough (so it's basically my own fault) or something about me is not right, appalling even (which circles back to I'm not trying hard enough or frames me as a victim of my genetics, upbringing or circumstances to be pitied).

Do not tell me how I feel. Do not try to tell me everything is fine and I shouldn't complain or ask for acknowledgement if everywhere I look, I'm reminded of how odd, how weird and how not normal I am. How much it inconveniences you to even acknowledge my existence, let alone respect any of my traits, views and choices.

And while I can only write from my own asexual point of view, I wrote this with all kinds of flavours of aspec in mind, so I'm explicitly including aromantics, aroace people and every shade of the spectrum in this. Not all my examples may apply to you, but I hope you can find something to relate to.

ETA: please feel free to add your own experiences of repression!

[metamatar]

i have a question and sorry if it sounds incoherent. why is it so important to marxists to distinguish that marxism is not “moral” or “ideological”? i understand that marxism is grounded in historical materialism and that it aims to understand how existing structures and institutions function with the specific goal of abolishing them in favour of a marxist state, but when it comes to understanding how to move forward past capitalism, how can MLs claim that it’s entirely objective and scientific? isnt the fundamental purpose of marxism (abolishing the oppressor class and putting the proletariat in power) a subjective one, given that it to support that you need to believe that abolishing the oppressor class is desirable in the first place? how would ML “scientifically” help people decide where the line is drawn on subjects like the death penalty and incarceration if its committed by a communist party (given that the decision that the cost of killing/imprisoning people is worth the boon it would give in establishing a communist state is still based on subjective goals?)

i don't think modern marxists should claim they're not ideological. im sure some do, but imo the correct claim is marxism is not idealist. i think some of this confusion comes from a popperian view of science as "neutral" or "objective" outside of time. how the political economy affects the propagation of ideology and the process of science as practiced in reality is very standard marxist analysis now. some of the claim to objectivity is something that most people claim belongs to their favourite philosophical project see the rawlsian veil of ignorance in liberalism. marx is also writing in a world where theological and religious reasoning have a lot of primacy in philosophy and he is drawing a clean break from that by hewing to scientific characterisation of his methods.

idealism, in the kantian sense is a philosophy that argues that our ideals (about say, fairness, justice etc) inform how we organise society. marxism, as philosophical project develops in response to kant and hegel to argue that the political economic base, ie the productive relations of society actually inform superstructure of ideals. to quote marx in the preface to critique of political economy: "it is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness."

for clarity's sake the idea that changes in the mode of production (mostly due to technology) transform the relations of production which is the main driving force of history is historical materialism. the analysis of why existing structures and institutions must be abolished therefore has to be grounded in analysis where such structures are considered variously – unstable, internally contradictory etc. if you view historical materialism as true, your theory of change cannot be that you'll change the world because it is unfair (an idea.) you can view the world as unfair as a marxist and talk about it to propagate the necessity of your project but that doesn't actually give you a blueprint on how to change it.

capitalists are oppressors, but marxism doesn't view the problem in their oppressive or evil natures. capitalist economies demand even the most moral capitalist to exploit the proletariat. but! it is desirable to abolish there class relations not merely because they are unfair and exploitative but because these class relationships cause workers to develop class consciousness, recognise their power and abolish capitalism.

on your specific example, i don't think marxism can or should claim their are no moral dilemmas. historical materialism doesn't assert that there are no conflicting understandings of history. walter benjamin's theses on the philosophy of history is imo good reading here.

so i dont think your concern about why it's important for marxists to believe this makes sense, because this is what marxism is. if you don't find this convincing, you're not a marxist. you could be an anarchist, or a social democrat or a radical liberal.

[the-delta-quadrant]

since rishi sunak talked about wanting to ban transgender people from using public bathrooms, i see a lot of talk about "transgender people deserve to feel safe in the bathroom that aligns with their gender".

completely ignoring that such a bathroom doesn't exist for a big chunk of transgender people?

transgender men and women being allowed in the men's and women's bathroom respectively doesn't really do much for nonbinary people at all.

a lot of us feel unsafe in such binary gendered spaces no matter what, already because we can't use them without misgendering ourselves. but it's barely ever taken into account because people love to act like the "transgender bathroom issue" will be solved if we just allow transgender men and women in the men's and women's bathrooms.

even some transgender people act like all gender bathrooms are too much to ask for now, they're something to implement "at some point", they're not a priority, etc. nonbinary people are yet again to wait our turn for safety and comfort. nonbinary people are still basically told even by other transgender people that we shouldn't exist in public spaces if we can't even piss safely. i've seen binary transgender people straight up say nonbinary people who bring this up are "derailing the conversation from what's important", like nonbinary safety doesn't matter.

transgender bathroom ban or not, i feel unsafe in a binary bathroom either way.

for *all* transgender people to safely exist in public life, gendered bathrooms need to be abolished. no safety for some of us without safety for all of us.

[hannieehaee]

omg hi!!! i love ur writing and ur always so detailed with emotions and reactions when u write!! that’s why i have a req for u i rly hope u accept it!!

could i please request a seungkwan drabble!! just a very domestic fluffy one like the two of u waking up to each other and he’s watching u as u sleep, tracing ur face just things like that!! hehe

content: bf!seungkwan, established relationship, fluff, etc.

wc: 387

a/n: hii thank u so much <33 this was such a soft premise it was so cute to write :c

masterlist

it was in moments like these that seungkwan truly felt no cares in the world.

there was nothing but you and him. nothing could disturb nor interrupt the peacefulness he felt in this moment. nothing compared to how happy he felt in watching you at your most relqxed state (well, maybe holding you in his arms as you slept was a big contender).

seungkwan liked to keep this to himself, but he had begun a new routine as of late.

after figuring out your sleeping schedule, he had made it a goal to train his body into waking up a few minutes before you got up and started your day. it had taken much effort to wake up without any incentive other than his instinctive need to see you, but it seemed like his incurable addiction to you had made it possible.

and this new little routine had become a favorite of his. he would wake up, turn to look at your side of the bed and simply watch as you remained asleep. sometimes he would keep count of your breaths, while other times he would lightly trace his fingers along the soft curves of your body. his fingers would sometimes stray away from your body and trace your features, hoping to commit every ridge of your face to memory.

this would only go on for about fifteen minutes or so as he took you in and enjoyed your sight in ways he knew no one else ever would. nothing else mattered to him other than knowing how irrevocably his you were. he felt a pride that could never be abolished.

he would occasionally end up waking you up, smiling at the way you scrunched up your nose as your slumber got interrupted. but he would play none the wiser any time you questioned why he was already awake, claiming he had woken up a minute or two before you did. in most of these occasions, he would entice you into falling back asleep, sometimes falling asleep along with you, while other times staying awake to admire you once more.

this was one of the greatest joys in seungkwan's life, as it allowed time to freeze and for everything around you to cease to exist. all there was was you, him, and his irrevocable love for you.

[toskarin]

i really dont know how to tell people that Copyright Laws Are Good, Actually. every time a company like disney or nintendo abuses copyright laws people always start talking about how copyright should be abolished, and in an ideal world, copyright laws wouldnt be necessary. but in the world we live in copyright laws are very much needed for creatives. while it's easy to be reactionairy when nintendo unfairly removes a fangame or disney threatens people over mickey mouse, people really need to understand that copyright laws are the only things stopping corporations and even other people from exploiting smaller ips. like, imagine if hasbro started making toys of your projects with no consent or contract or payment. that's what copyright laws are stopping

taking this in best possible faith, this is still an opinion completely unmoored from any material understanding of how IP works to the point where I can't take it seriously.

if hasbro started making toys out of my project without my consent, in the world we currently exist in, I would have little to no recourse simply because I could not win a court case against hasbro. they would drag it out and I would be in financial ruin long before I could achieve anything

if I made something similar to a hasbro property without infringing on their IP and they came down on me under the pretense that I had infringed, I would likely have to reach a settlement and shutter my project. it would not matter whether or not I was right

copyright does not protect you: it protects people who can afford to wield it

and making an assumption that you and I are more likely to be economic peers than not, we cannot afford to wield it

[hazeltongzhi]

How does one argue against, for the lack of a better word, materialist defenses of capitalism (like for example "capitalist countries have higher GDP than noncapitalist countries, which means they're Better"). I used to appeal to morality when critiquing capitalism to some success in the past, but now I've been reading Real Theory more and speaking with more educated people, now I have zero faith in my ability to properly critique capitalist ideology without falling back on moralistic arguments. How does one avoid moralistic thinking, especially when talking with one not already versed in materialism?

While appeals to morality do work on some, it won't work on everyone and it sits on relatively shaky ground compared to scientific explanations. Before you do any convincing or arguing remember to know your audience. Trying to convince some bourgeoisie to support socialism won't work since it's asking them to abandon their class interests. 9 times out of 10, this simply won't work (once in a blue moon, you'll get a class traitor but don't rely on it). Do a proper class analysis of your audience before continuing.

In short, you need to scientifically and rigorously study and understand socialism, as it has and currently exists; from the Paris Commune to the PRC.

You have to know the total steel output of China in 1949 versus 2023. I kid, but understanding how the living standards of a country improved under socialism is crucial to add context. You have to understand the metrics that capitalist economists use and why they're inadequate. You have to be able to replace that with a metric that actually matters to everyday people; average lifespan, child mortality rate, electrification rate, poverty rate (not defined by IMF or world bank metrics), literacy rate, home ownership rate, etc., etc..

Another important skill is being able to identify, understand, and provide solutions for the contradictions under capitalism is also incredibly important. Anyone, including the defenders of capitalism, say that the capitalist mode of production has flaws. The question, then, is to propose a solution. For example, houselessness is an ever increasingly acute problem faced by advanced liberal democracies across the globe. The liberal answer is that this is a supply issue as having more supply should drive down the price. However, pointing out that having more supply simply makes it so that those with the economic power to purchase units will snap up those excess supply and return the market to the same equilibrium. The socialist solution, then, is to abolish the commodification of housing, getting rid of landlords or having rent caps, nationalizing developers, etc..

For most people you encounter, assuming they're proletarians, you will have to teach them the basics of materialist analysis. That means breaking them out of liberalism. To do this, you yourself need a solid understanding of dialectical materialism and historical materialism, the foundational framework of analysis for Marxism. The basics of which, being able to recognize distinct classes, their material needs, how these needs conflict with each other, and what material actions each class does to try and resolve these needs. To start breaking someone out of liberalism, you have to be able to identify and attack liberalism as an ideology. Point out how it fails to explain the world then replace it with scientific socialism. For example, liberalism posits that problems with greed, e.g. billionaires and companies exploiting workers more and more is that individual billionaires or companies are the problem and that by replacing those individuals, those systematic issues will be fixed. You have to show that those individuals act that way because the profit motive forces them to; that if they fail to bring in profit, they will be sacked by the investors or board of directors for someone who is willing to exploit. Then show that these are the material reasons for why bourgeoisie exploit, instead of inherent evilness or some immaterial thing.

It is not an easy or quick process and I myself took several years to read and learn before I started coming out in full offense on the side of scientific socialism. But this process is necessary in order to agitate, organize, and fight for a proletarian future.

[letters-to-lgbt-kids]

My dear lgbt+ kids, 

An underrated health and wellbeing tool is play. 

When you think about playing, you may immediately picture little children - but by definition, play describes “any activity engaged in purely for enjoyment and recreation with no definite practical purpose” and those activities stay important throughout your whole life. 

Why are those activities important? 

Play is good for your body. Intentionally doing something just for fun helps to activate the “rest and digest” mode that is necessary to recover and heal from stress. It signals that you’re safe and helps your body relieve tension. 

It’s also good for your brain. It can stimulate your imagination, visualization and critical thinking skills, which can help you build skills like resilience and adaptability. 

Play can also foster empathy and understanding of others as it can help you see things from another’s perspective. 

Playing can make you laugh, and laughter comes with a whole sleeve of health benefits, such as decreasing blood pressure and even improving your immune system! 

Playing together can strengthen relationships. Positive, fun social interactions are important for your emotional wellbeing. 

Now some of you may think “that’s all nice, but how do I even play as an adult?”. While play is a natural behavior of human beings, many adults need to re-learn how to play - it depends on your specific environment and social circles but you may feel a lot of pressure to be productive all the time and play is by its very nature not productive. So, the first step in re-learning play is to give yourself permission to just *be* instead of *do* (and that can be a huge step!). 

Some ideas on how to ease back into play: 

Think about your childhood. (Or if you can, ask a parent, sibling or childhood friend, that can be a great way to bring back memories!) What were your favorite ways to play back then? What did you love about your favorite game? Does any particular memory immediately give you that “I wish I could do that again” feeling? (You may not necessarily find anything that you want to just replicate as an adult as-is, this is just meant to kick-start your imagination!) 

Gameify everyday tasks. Try to spot as many yellow items as possible on your commute to work. Make up a silly song about laundry while putting away the laundry. Pretend to be on a cooking show while making dinner. Do what you always do, just allow yourself to be silly about it! 

Do something creative, even (and especially) if you’re not good at it. You may not think of drawing, writing etc. as playing but those are activities you can do for pure entertainment! 

Moving your body doesn’t need to be purposeful exercise (and certainly not hating yourself in the gym), it can also be playtime: Do a silly little dance to your favorite song! Tippytoe, crawl, jump, walk backward.. from your bedroom to the kitchen, just for the fun of it! 

Rethink toys. While it is fully okay for a grownup to buy, own and play with toys, and we should abolish the negative stereotypes about it (it’s creepy, it’s inherently a sign of poor mental health etc.) these stereotypes do exist and you may simply not feel comfortable. Luckily, there are a few toys that are generally considered socially acceptable for adults or are even marketed towards adults, such as board games, stress balls, adult coloring books, certain Lego sets or fan/collectors toys (like action figures). And when there are no judgy eyes watching, you may also have fun just playing with household items such as cardboard rolls! No need to go out and buy something! 

Keep in mind that play isn’t a competition to win. You can’t play wrong - that’s the beauty of it! Just let your curiosity and enthusiasm guide you. 

With all my love, 

Your Tumblr Dad 

[alpaca-clouds]

Solarpunk is not archievable under Capitalism

Okay, let me make one thing very clear: We will never have a Solarpunk future as long as we live under capitalism. Again and again I will find people, who have fallen in love with the idea of Solarpunk, but are unwilling to consider any alternative to capitalism. So, please, let me quickly explain what that just is not gonna work out that way. There will be no Solarpunk under capitalism. Because the incentives of capitalism are opposing anything that Solarpunk stands for.

So let me please run over a few core points.

What is capitalism?

One issue that a lot of people do seem to have is understanding what capitalism even is. The defining attribute of capitalism is that "the means of production" (e.g. the things needed to create things) are privately owned and as such the private owners will decide both what gets created through it and who will get a share in any profits created through them. The ultimate goal in this is, to generate as large as a profit as possible, ideally more and more profit with every year. In real terms this means, that most of those means of productions in the way of companies and the like are owned mostly by shareholders, that is investors who have bought part of the company.

While capitalism gets generally thaught in schools with this entire idea of the free market, that... actually is not the central aspect of capitalism. I would even go so far to argue something else...

The market is actually not free and cannot be free

The idea of the free market is, that prices are controlled by the concept of supply and demand, with the buyer in the end deciding on whether they want to spend their money on something and being able to use that power to also enact control on the supplier.

However... that is actually not what is happening. Because it turns out that the end consumer has little influence, because they are actually not actively participating in the market. The market mainly is something that is happening between multimillionaires. It is their demand (or the lack thereoff) that is the influence. Investors, mainly. Which is logical. In a system, where the power to buy is deciding, the person who can spend multiple millions is gonna have a lot more power, than the person who has twenty bucks to their name.

Hence: 99% of all people are not participating in anything resembling a free market, and the remaining 1% are not interested in such a system.

Money under capitalism

One thing everyone needs to understand is, that for the most part money under capitalism is a very theoretical concept. It might be real for the average joe, who for the most part will not have more than maybe ten grand to their name, but it is not real to multi millionaires, let alone billionairs. Something that is going to be thrown around a lot is the concept of "net worth". But what you need to realize is that this net worth is not real money. It does not exist. It is the estimated worth of stuff these people own. Maybe houses and land, maybe private jets, maybe shares in companies and other things. These people's power and literal worth is tied to them being able theoretically able to sell these assets for money.

In fact a lot of these very rich people do not even have a lot of liquid money. So money they can spend. In fact there are quite a few billionairs who do not even own a million in liquidated money. The money they use in everyday life they borrow from banks, while putting their assets up as a security.

Why capitalism won't abolish fossil fuels

Understanding this makes it quite easy to understand why the capitalists cannot have fossil fuels ending. Because a lot of them own millions, at times billions in fossil fuel related assets. They might own a coal mine, or a fracking station, or maybe an offshore rig, or a power plant burning fossil fuels. At times they have 50% or more of their net worth bound in assets like this. If we stopped using fossil fuels, all those assets would become useless from one day to the next. Hence it is not in the interest of these very rich people to have that happen.

But it goes further than that, because politicians cannot have that happen either. Because the entire economy is build around these assets existing and being used as leverage and security for other investments.

Why capitalism won't build walkable cities and infrastructure

The same goes very much for the entire infrastructure. Another thing a lot of people have invested a lot of money into is cars. Not physical cars they own, but cars manufacturing. So, if we were building walkable cities with bikelanes and public transportation, a lot less people would buy cars, those manufactoring factories becoming worthless and hence once more money... just vanishing, that would otherwise be further invested.

Furthermore, even stuff like investing into EVs is a touch call to get to happen, because the investors (whose theoretical and not real money is tied to those manufacturers) want to see dividents at the end of the quartal. And if the manufactuerer invested into changing their factories to build EVs for a while profits would go down due to that investment. Hence, capitalism encourages them not doing that.

Why capitalism won't create sustainable goods

A lot of people will decry the fact that these days all goods you buy will break within two years, while that old washing machine your grandparents bought in 1962 is still running smoothly. To which I say: "Obviously. Because they want to make profits. Hence, selling you the same product every two years is more profitable."

If you wonder: "But wasn't that the same in 1962?" I will answer: "Yes. But in 1962 the market was still growing." See, with the post war economic boom more and more people got more divestable income they could spend. So a lot of companies could expect to win new costumers. But now the market is saturated. There is not a person who could use a washing machine, who does not have one. Hence, that thing needs to break, so they can sell another one.

The market incentive is against making sustainable, enduring products, that can be repaired. They would rather have you throw your clothing, your smartphone and your laptop away every two years.

Why workers will always be exploited under capitalism

One other central thing one has to realize about capitalism is that due to the privitization of the means of production the workers in a capitalist system will always be exploited. Because they own nothing, not even their own work. Any profit the company makes is value that has in the end been created by the workers within the company. (Please note, that everyone who does not own their work and cannot decide what happens to the value created by it is a worker. No matter whether they have a blue collar or a white collar job.)

That is also, why there is the saying: All profit is unpaid wages.

Under capitalism the profits will get divided up under the shareholders (aka the investors), while many of the workers do not even have enough money to just... live. Hence, good living standards for everyone are explicitly once more against the incentives of capitalism.

Why there won't be social justice under capitalism

Racism, sexism and also the current rise of queermisia are all a result of capitalism and have everything to do with capitalist incentives. Because the capitalists, so the people who own the means of production, profit from this discrimination. This is for two reasons.

For once having marginalized people creates groups that are easier exploitable. Due to discrimination these people will have a harder time finding a job and living quarters, making them more desperate and more likely to take badly paid jobs. Making it easier to exploit them for the profit of the capitalists.

A workforce divided through prejudice and discrimination will have a harder time to band together in unions and strikes. The crux of the entire system si, that it is build on the exploitation of workers - but if the workers stopped working, the system would instantly collapse. Hence the power of strikes. So, dividing the workforce between white and non-white, between queer and straight, between abled and disabled makes it easier to stop them from banding together, as they are too busy quaralling amoung themselves.

Why we won't decolonize under capitalism

Colonialism has never ended. Even now a lot of natural ressources and companies in the former colonies are owned by western interest. And this will stay that way, because this way the extraction of wealth is cheaper - making it more profitable. Colonialism has never ended, it has only gotten more subtle - and as long as more money can be made through this system, it will not end.

There won't be Solarpunk under capitalism

It is not your fault, if you think that capitalism cannot end. You have been literally taught this for as long as you can think. You never have been given the information about what capitalism is and how it works. You have never been taught the alternative mechanisms and where and when they were implemented.

You probably look at Solarpunk and think: "Yeah, that... that looks neat. I want that." And here is the thing: I want that, too.

But I have studied economics. Literally. And I can tell you... it does not work. It will not create better living situations for everyone. It will not save the world. Because in the end the longterm goals are not compatible with a capitalistic system.

I know it is fucking scary to be told: "Yeah, change the world you know in massive ways - or the world will end." But... it is just how the things are standing.

You can start small, though. Join a local party. Join a union. Join a mutual aid network. Help repair things. Help people just deal. Our power lies in working together. That is, in the end, what will get us a better future.

[yuri-alexseygaybitch]

I've spent the past couple years hearing from the American left that prisons, police, the death penalty, etc. should be abolished. However, recently I've heard a number Communists saying that these things shouldn't be abolished. I understand the argument put forward by my fellow Communists, that abolitionism is unrealistic and prisons, police, the death penalty, etc. are necessary for a socialist state in order to combat Fascism, but I find it hard to believe that a truly just justice system which benefits society is possible given the nightmarish acts of state violence and police brutality which I've seen.

You are making the mistake of preceding from an ideal, i.e. "a truly just justice system", rather than the material facts of reality. We can sit here all day and come up with what the features of a "just", "abolitionist", etc. society would look like and state our desire to move from the currently existing society to that one, but if we do not pay attention to how we can begin to move from this one to another one it is literally worthless. This is why anarchism and (rad)liberalism are political dead ends with nothing to offer - there is no coherent roadmap from "capitalist death cult" to "tolerable for human life" beyond the desire to abolish, to do away with, to say "this is what a just society looks like" and think if people stay on the streets long enough it will manifest.

Communists don't manifest, they build power to protect the interests of the working class against the bourgeoisie. Building that power under the material conditions as they presently exist means utilizing the raw power of the state (i.e. the military, police, and prisons - the "special bodies of armed men" in Lenin's words) to defend against the onslaught of the bourgeoisie and counter-revolutionary forces, which as history has shown, will immediately and relentlessly assault a DOTP from the moment of its inception. No socialist society has lasted more than a year without exercising its ability to defend itself.

So yes, we can sit here and say "in a truly just society there will be no cops, no prisons, no death penalty" and I'd agree with you. My hatred for the "justice" system and how nakedly it acts as an instrument of suppression of workers, anti-fascists, land defenders, and marginalized people is what initially radicalized me away from liberalism to begin with. However we must contend with reality and the need for socialist projects to defend themselves. I want a revolution that last more than a day.

[siriuslyobsessedwithfiction]

What do you mean Nikolai Lantsov was a morally grey character? He was a selfless hero!

Literally Nikolai Lantsov:

Befriended and convinced already disoriented and ignorant Alina that the Darkling was a bigger issue than the First Army and the people turning on Grisha and executing them, a brewing civil war that would most likely happen even if they killed the Darkling, Fjerda and Shu-Han casually invading their territory, etc. That they should abandon negotiations with the Darkling and prepare for war even though the country can't take it. Also, his reasoning that he should become the King? Nikolai: Oh yeah, I'm a bastard with no claim to the throne who has never actually done anything to change Ravka for the better, I was too busy playing pirates. And I just gave the rapist King who doomed this country a nice retirement and more servants to rape, while your friend Genya who he raped gets a trial for attempted regicide, be grateful she will be spared.

"Fouche did not miss the boat: Befriending the revolutionary leader Robespierre, he quickly rose in the rebel ranks. When Fouche arrived in Paris to take his seat at the convention, a violent rift had broken out between die moderates and the radical Jacobins. Fouche sensed that in the long run neither side would emerge victorious."

While Alina and Darkling were watching each other, Nikolai was watching the throne. Darkling got rid of the King and the only legitimate heir for him, so all Nikolai had to do is march into a disbanded army and declare himself a war hero and the King. Nikolai: Maybe we should just abolish absolute monarchy in Ravka because it's 20th century already, some of the countries no longer have it and no one even wants it anymore? Don't be ridiculous. My mother was an oyster and I'm the pearl or something.

"Power rarely ends up in the hands of those who start a revolution, or even of those who further it; power sticks to those who bring it to a conclusion. That was the side Fouche wanted to be on.

At a certain moment, however, he called a halt to the killings, sensing the mood of the country was turning, and despite the blood already on his hands, citizens of Lyons hailed him as a savior from what had become known as the Terror."

Nikolai to the remaining Grisha after the civil war: Right, so I know I used my big guns to slaughter you, the oppressed minority, because you sided with a man who gave you shelter, saved you and was your respected general instead of a girl who was prejudiced against you, never trained, and abandoned you, BUT I need an army. So, here's your pardon and you can once again become serfs to the monarchy who failed you for centuries. Also, the drafting age has been lowered for Grisha and now we're sending unprepared children to missions. Freedom for Grisha? Letting them buy land? Don't be ridiculous. Can't you see I have more important problems to deal with? The Darkling still exists trapped somewhere in the form of a ghost!

If only the author would acknowledge in KoS duology that he has flaws and selfish ambitions. Let him be a complicated character with layers, it's not the end of the world.

[communistkenobi]

genuinely curious, if you think "it's a girl!" and "it's a boy!" categorisations are inherently oppressive, do you believe a world where gender isn't recognized in any meaningful way before the child has means to define it for themself to be the best alternative?

I’m going to use a different abolitionist example to illustrate what I mean: when people advocate for abolishing the nuclear family, they are not saying “get rid of parental relationships” or “get rid of fathers.” They are identifying a specific social relation that is used as a building block of society and advocating for a world where it doesn’t exist, because its existence is the foundation of certain forms of oppression. The western social model where children are raised in private detached housing by a maximum of two parents (and realistically, mostly by their mother - a huge problem in itself!) who have complete control over their material, emotional, and social needs produces a fucking huge amount of adverse outcomes - abuse, trauma, dysfunction, poor health - the list is nearly infinite. And this family model also inherently reproduces class, race, and gender by virtue of the fact that children inherit those things from their parents and are forced to exist in those contexts. And even in individual cases where it doesn’t produce abuse, even if you have very good parents who are not abusive to you in any way, that social relationship is still oppressive, in the same way that having a cool boss doesn’t mean that wage labour is good. A society where children are not entirely dependent on one or two people for all of their needs, where they are free to form meaningful relationships with adults outside of strict categories of family, where children are not legally and socially treated like the property of their parents, where bloodline is not privileged as the dominant mode of intergenerational transfer of knowledge, culture, skill, wealth, etc, is a much better world!

“Gender abolition” is, I think, a poor term for a similar goal, and one that has a lot of reactionary baggage (baggage that is not coincidental - I think its imprecision as a term is useful for terf politics). Abolition of patriarchy is probably more precise - I am advocating for a world where gender is entirely non-coercive, where gender does not produce any oppressive social relations. You can engage in gender as a culture in the same way you can engage with different forms of art, in a way that is purely voluntary. This configuration does not prohibit the possibility of trans people; we would just exist in an entirely different form than the current western, medicalist, patriarchal, white supremacist context we are forced to navigate.

So yes, I think for gender to be truly emancipatory, it needs to be engaged with as a voluntary form of human culture, as a form of art that we do with ourselves and our bodies, and to do this we need to abolish sex distinctions on medical records, gender markers on state documents, gendered facilities, and many, many other things.

[lycanthrology]

from an intersex perspective, it frustrates me when perisex people use terms like afab and amab as shorthand for the sex binary because (while it does have its place in some discussions) many people are assigned a gender at birth that does not match what is typically associated with the ‘biology’ of that gender. If I was to say ‘I was assigned female at birth’, people are going to assume I mean that I have/or had an oestrogen based endocrine system, a vagina, xx chromosomes etc etc when that is not necessarily the case! all saying you were ‘assigned a gender at birth’ is saying is that you were ‘assigned a gender at birth’. A doctor saw you from the outside as a baby and said this thing is a girl or a boy (or maybe something that needs correcting). That means NOTHING on a biological level. It’s perisexist and ignorant to assume that sex assignment has any actual relevance to people’s bodies and that the biological sex binary even exists. i dont think any of us can be liberated until the sex binary is abolished

[iamnmbr3]

One of weirdest disconnects (but far from being the only one), I see from the left in regards to Israel is that jews have no claim to the land, are colonizers and oppressors, but at the same time make long ass rants about how native americans had their land stolen from them, deserve to claim it back and get reparations and all that. And the disconnect here is that jewish people, as a group, are native to the region of Israel, their ancestors literally built a country there after escaping slavery, lived there for a long ass time but were eventually kicked out by the Roman Empire, and after thousands of years of being persecute and not felling safe returned to their ancestral homeland, to reclaim and rebuild what was stolen from them. Isn’t that what people say we owe native americans? Or indigenous groups that were kicked out of their lands in general? Yes, in their thousand year absence other peoples built their lives around the region of Jerusalem. Yes, Palestine deserves to be recognized and it’s citizens to have decent lives like everyone else. Should Israel never have existed, or cease to exist? No! There’s plenty of room for both peoples to have their countries, the jewish people belong there too and history proves they need a nation to serve as a refuge! Their land was returned to them by British after WW2, since they legally owed it after the fall of the Byzantine Empire, and while the partition could have been better, after all the horror’s jewish people had experienced it’s hard to blame to UN for giving it a go. Honestly, this whole situation just shows how dumb, hateful, bigoted, misinformed and disingenuous a lot of people in the left are. It’s easy to say that the Hogwart’s Legacy game is anti-jewish, that supporting it gives power and money to evil people and then harassing people that want to play it (which is dumb all around, as pretty much all the other hot takes and boycott to that game), but when it comes down to actually standing with jewish people and showing empathy? Nah, that’s too hard for them. It’s all performative. It’s easier to jump on the hate train and say they deserved what H*mas did to them, it gives them more likes.

Yeah. So many people on the Left are all "land back" until it's time to say land back for Jews. Kind of like how a lot of the Left shouts "believe all victims" about sexual assault till those victims are Jewish. I mean would anyone on the Left call any of the recognized sovereign nations of indigenous people in North America ethnostates that need to be abolished? Or say indigenous people still trying to get back a piece of their ancestral lands should stop because it was too long ago now? The hypocrisy demonstrates how deeply antisemitic views have seeped into parts of the Left. Which we cannot allow.

Jews are indigenous to the Levant. Both Israelis and Palestinians have a claim to the land. Israel exists. That's a fact that won't change. Any workable longterm peace must find a compromise solution that acknowledges both Israeli and Palestinian needs. Any other solution will simply result in more bloodshed (which a lot of "activists" in the West seem more interested in...probably because it's not their blood being shed).