Do you maybe mean snap?

Docks of New York and The Cabinet of Dr.Caligari are also really cool silent age movies

Is there fantasy that isn’t like this

I don’t feel confident that either of us have reliable information on where China is in terms of cultural progression to adopting LGBT rights.

Agreed. All my statements can be appended with an asterisk that all of these things would appear to be that way based on information available.

You might be standing on shaky ground regarding the US’s apparent progress and recent advancements, which appears at high risk of reactionary regression

100% agree. It is a very worrying and increasingly likely prospect.

On the other hand Cuba recently did a 2022 Cuban Family Code referendum (wikipedia).

Yes! Cuba’s reforms are very welcome and positive for LGBT folks, and I often use it as an example myself!

I have no idea what this is referring to

No problem, I’m happy to explain: In context of trans issues - DIY is referring to DIY Hormone Therapy (DIY HRT for short), where instead of whatever the medical process in a country is for transition (e.g. you go to a psychiatrist and they assess and diagnose you and then you go to an endocrinologist who issues a prescription for hormones) you go around all that by simply buying medication from usually a grey-market pharmacy that does not ask for prescriptions or even a homebrew unlicensed project that makes their own injectable hormones (it sounds dodgy, but the community is really good at self-policing the bad stuff from the good stuff, so it’s a viable option).

Since HRT is what the bulk of physical transition is and what causes the most physical changes, especially to secondary sex characteristics (external physical traits that are not genitalia), it is highly desirable to trans folks, and the ability to do so without wait times, costs or legal restrictions associated with their country’s medical system is extremely important, especially when such a system is or appears to be unfriendly and restrictive (UK, Russia, China).

The UK government was talking a big game about restricting DIY by blocking websites where one can buy hormones, but it culminated in one request to Google to take down a search result, so I feel fairly safe saying that the UK government simply doesn’t have the means to do this, but in China, the government is fairly good at internet censorship (though the actual extent of it is overblown by western media of course), hence my original point is that they have capability and appear to have demonstrated a political desire to restrict DIY, which will harm trans folks.

That’s the short version, hope it makes sense and thanks for reading.

Lol. You literally think that not starting any wars in general for more than 40 years is just as bad as constantly invading the rest of the world and killing and torturing non-white people - including LGBT people.

No? I just said that China’s trans policy is awful and backwards and my solidarity goes to those who suffer from it in China and that the US is better in that respect. US imperialism is awful and the past half-century of exploitation and subjugation by the US is also terrible. One does not exclude the other.

Hell, you have come out and said that you are more aligned with the latter than with the former

I said that because trans rights are better in the US than China. On that front, I am indeed more aligned with the US than China, but it doesn’t mean I don’t also hate the US.

it’s safe to say that you are an imperialism supporter. Your ‘anarchist perspective’ is just ‘it’s good that my state kills millions abroad for my benefit’.

Because I support trans rights?

You have already said that you are more fine with a regime

I’m fundamentally, as an anarchist - not fine with the US or China. It’s in the name.

with a state that has provably made massive improvements in the lives of working-class people, has been at the forefront of switching the world’s energy to green, which hasn’t committed any genocides, and which hasn’t started any wars in more than 40 years.

And all of these things are good. China did good! And that’s not even all, their actual management of the day-to-day absolutely eviscerates the west in terms of sheer ability to get shit done, from building entire cities while the UK says it will take them 20 years to build a reservoir, building high speed rail while the UK can’t get a tunnel dig approved and building and maintaining roads that make US infrastructure look like dirt trails.

See? I’m not some imperialist stooge or a jingoistic patriot and I’m happy to praise China where it’s due. But that doesn’t contradict in any way anything I said earlier.

Supposedly, you know more about where you live than about countries where you never set foot

Yes

and which you are only informed about by memes and other forms of osmosis.

No. I’m by no means an expert, but there’s tons of resources online and offline that aren’t memes or the U.S. State Department. Even just reading the sources on Wikipedia isn’t usually a bad start.

Supposedly, also, you have a greater ability to influence the situation in the country where you live than elsewhere

Yes.

Westerners who consider themselves to be ‘anarchists’ sure do tend to ignore all that

No. If anything Anarchists are the leftists who actually do stuff like organize mutual aid networks or at the very least squat vacant properties of the rich.

and simp for their genocidal states

No. Where did I simp for any country here? I just stated facts - that US is better for trans people than China.

while regurgitating said states’ propaganda about how evil and barbarous all of those countries that are outside of the imperial core are.

No, again, where did I do that? I’m sure there’s misinformed comrades out there, but this is an absurd framing.

Your beliefs are neither anti-authoritarian

No. I decry authoritarian overreach wherever I see it, be it the US or China, in context of LGBT issues, things are worse in China than the US, but the last century of US’ imperialist foreign policy where it imposed it’s will on the globe are all horrifically awful things too.

It’s like some folks just cannot comprehend that you don’t have to simp for any empires at all, and you can critique them all at once, all while focusing on the place you live and what you can do to help and influence most.

nor are they rooted in international camaraderie and recognition of people from other countries as fellow human beings.

No. In fact it is the exact opposite, as I don’t see people from different cultures as some unknowable aliens but as just people who live somewhere else.

I know trans folks, I understand our struggles here in the west and I do not think of trans folks in China as being some ‘other’ who must enjoy being under the boot of oppressive, backwards laws, I have nothing but solidarity and support for them in achieving liberation just as we aim for here.

I do not want to be presumptive, but frankly if anything this view that you have seems to be of someone who hasn’t traveled much, which is totally fine, neither have I really, it is a purposeful injustice that few people have the means to do so, but from my experiences traveling, people are people, and they are mostly the same everywhere, most working people want the same things and there is nothing wrong with being critical of the forces of capital or religion or governments that transcend borders and require international solidarity from us.

Really? Where? When I visited the whole place was full of dead dogs, couldn’t even take two steps before hearing the squishing of a decaying carcass.

Recently I’ve stumbled upon a YT channel called “Good fight ministries” or something of that sort and it was all about how transgenders and celebrities are satan so pretty average stuff, using bible verses way out of context to twist them to be a condemnation of Hollywood directors (using clips of them talking about being inspired as proof of possession) and singers I’ve never heard of (Jesus famously said grammies are evil i guess), but this then led me down a rabbit hole of crazy “Christian spiritual warfare” videos where schizos and grifters bang on about defending yourself against demons that posses you at night, with one lady claiming some sort of ghoul was “strumming” her spine at night. Unironically all these people need Jesus.

you know theres plenty of situations in the us were families need to approve of you transitioning, or are you conveniently ignoring that?

No I don’t actually, I’d be interested to hear about this? As far as I’m aware, blue US states all have informed consent as the treatment model for adults, basically world standard in that regard.

Wow an imperialist

I think just because I critique an empire you like from an anarchist perspective doesn’t make me an imperialist, but we can agree to disagree I suppose.

Struggle where you are, fight in your workplace, support and raise awareness for international causes at home.

One doesn’t exclude the other. I’m not sitting about foaming at the mouth about China all day, we’re just having a discussion and I’m open to hearing your perspective.

On the grounds I get to benefit? So are you implying that the relative freedom for queer folk in the US is a direct product of imperialist foreign policy, and the absence of this in China is why queer rights struggle there?

I’m proposing replacing minimum wage w/ something like UBI (my preference is a Negative Income Tax for more of a direct replacement). That way that $100 isn’t being added to peoples’ means, but instead it’s replacing wages

So it will just accomplish nothing, as people will work the same (more if we follow current trends) for $9.00 and hour instead of $12.00, but will have an extra $3.00 from taxes on the middle class (the rich will avoid taxes always).

This is certainly a proposal.

which can keep total inflation stable

Ah yeah, like right now where inflation is low and even decreasing, but things keep getting more expensive, jobs more and more scarce and actual value is ever smaller, while building true wealth through home ownership is ever more unreachable, while being poor is only more and more expensive and social mobility is at an all time low? Lol.

Measures of inflation are like COVID cases being low before we started testing more people.

That gives employees the freedom to say no to poor working conditions and inadequate pay without worrying about where their next meal is coming from.

That’s the thing - it won’t. Capitalists won’t like this, and competing with one another by offering better working conditions will only make them worse off - they will instead band together and price fix the market, or simply complete the ongoing switch to using gig economy “contractors” instead of employees.

Capitalism is a race to the bottom. This is ofc a hypothetical, IRL they would never allow any such laws with actual teeth to pass unless a dictatorship of the proletariat showed them to the guillotines.

Sure, and moving to socialism won’t change that, all it does is replace “the rich” with “the well-connected.”

This is an argument so old Marx debunked it himself. But I’ll say this: even if this is true, corruption is indeed possible in any system, but only in capitalism we worship it and call it “lobbying”.

People being rich isn’t a problem, especially since generational wealth is often gone after 3 generation

So just because it hasn’t been 3 generations yet, Musk isn’t a problem? Bezos? Zucc?

The important thing is that who “the rich” are changes periodically so we don’t get into a Russian oligarch situation.

The Russian oligarchs are actually new rich too, most of them got wealthy by picking the corpse of the Soviet Union, during western enforced shock therapy, while the poors were left to heroin and dying of AIDS. What a woopsie that turned out to be with fascist Russia now eh?

As long as that’s improving year-over-year, things are getting better. Whether some people have tens or hundreds of millions doesn’t really impact me day-to-day.

Things have declined since the 1980s in terms of buying power of the middle income young people of today across the board, and that’s before we get into the fact life itself got more expensive (e.g. now a starter crappy job needs an MSc, used to be they hired barely literate lead eaters, who are now bosses).

It’s slightly offset if you measure happiness by socially-funded scientific and technological progress (internet was a government project) but even that is now debatable, as capitalism has sunk its teeth into that also, and more and more social services of the 20th century are privatized into oblivion.

And that’s just the local, street-level stuff. What about the global evil of capitalism? Israel? Afghanistan? Iraq? Neo-colonialism of the global south, American corporations licking dictatorial boots the world over? the blockade of Cuba? Police racism and brutality? Sexism? Ableism?

The neoliberal imperialism of the United States through it’s client-state in Israel alone is enough to wonder, whether this system should be left as-is.

Now the USSR did a fair bit of shit too, and China does a lot even worse, all of it is deserving of critique, but US’s (and it’s western vassals’) issues are precisely as a result of its system. The US is very much an oligarchy, and is three corporations in a trenchcoat, and occasionally, when whistleblowers, whether corporate or military wind up dead, people look up, and it’s important that they blame the right people, because otherwise, they’ll blame each other, and fascism - the final form of neoliberal capitalism - wins.

where

I might be taking a meme way too seriously, buuuut.

Okay, if life in China and the US is about equal if not better in favour of China - why not go live there?

I wouldn’t. Why? No trans rights. Familial approval for medication is a killer for trans people, in practice it might as well be a ban outside of two neighbourhoods in San Francisco. Not to mention the clamping down on DIY, which unlike the west, the Chinese government has real power to actually enforce to some extent.

So the US is better off in that regard, I’d much rather live there and their government positions align more with my own and I’m anti-China and “anti-authoritarian” in that sense, but still a socialist.

Why wouldn’t I be?

This is just one example, there are others. So I think it’s disingenuous to frame Libertarian socialists/anarchists as purely just simping for 'murikkka when many of them are readily willing to admit US bad too, just less bad in some ways.

Trump World, the world’s leading alternative to Disney World for nightmare enthusiasts.

Read pretty much any story from those who left the USSR to get a better picture of how life was there.

A very unbiased account indeed

but I find real stories of people trying to flee more valuable in understanding life in an area than books with economic figures.

I don’t. People for the most part are morons that gulp down ivermectin and bleach enemas by the truckload to make their healing crystals work in time for Sunday church, so they can pray away the gay. People are fickle, and are often at odds with facts. As a trans person I know this well.

If life was so good there

That’s the neat part, I never claimed that. The USSR was a shithole, but the user I originally responded to was wrong as well. Two things can be true at once.

UBI

Or just nationalize necessities to cut out capitalist middlemen taking a cut. All a UBI of $100 will do is raise prices by $100 because people now have $100 more, and landlords et al. will want those $100. Under capitalism and neoliberalism the rich will always be at the top of the food chain in this manner.

Socialist policies should be limited, imo, to voluntary associations, like co-ops and private unions.

So they can be easily crushed by capitalist lobbying in western “”““democracies””".

I admire neolibs who genuinely want to make things better, and you have my respect for that, but I think you’re just a bit naive and haven’t quite thought everything through.

In reality, their education system was overly focused on technical skills, neglecting essential life skills like critical thinking, creativity, decision-making, and many others.

The US is the only country in the western world that teaches strictly extra-curricular matters at a university level, afaik. I went to uni in the UK for computer science, all of my classes were only about computer science and it’s subdomains only, there are no “life skills” classes.

This became apparent in the 90s when many supposedly ‘highly educated’ individuals were involved in fraudulent schemes, failed to build and stand for democracy

As opposed to the low levels of fraud and extremely healthy democracies of which countries exactly?

As for the rest of your claims I would like to see direct sources. The “essential items” tidbit in particular I find suspect because the definition is quite fickle and the idea is subjective and depends on circumstances. Cars were famously not very common amongst USSR citizens. What was though is public transport, and we’re now in the west finding out that neglecting public transport and shifting towards personal vehicles has been a huge mistake, so that’s that.

Lolwut? USSR recovered from being a devastated bomb crater of a country faster than Europe did on American dollar while waging a cold war against the rest of the world. They beat the US to space time and time again too.

Come the 80s, their manufacturing was well ahead of the west, and there weren’t any food issues either, so I’m not sure what you mean? The horrors of Stalin’s collectivisation efforts were a good bit before the cold war, and that wasn’t really an issue of food manufacturing.

Nobody was forced to do any type of work more than anybody is under capitalism, if anything under capitalism as it is today - you take what you are given.

In the USSR, higher education being free (as is the socialist tradition) gave people a lot more choice, no need to balance student debt against future potential earnings and as such ability to pay health expenses, like we see in the US today.

They suffered from consumer goods issues because things like game consoles and tamagotchi can’t exactly be planned in a planned economy.

It’s why I personally believe in a dual-economy, where necessities are planned centrally, from housing to infrastructure to utilities and independent worker co-operatives do the rest, I think that’s the lesson there ultimately. Oh and fuck the Russian Federation.

Is that nostalgia critic at the bottom?

Just turn off watch history (turns off recommendations and the home page) and use the subscription feed exclusively. Suggested videos will only appear based on your currently watched video, so completely unpersonalized

Use DeArrow! It not only removes clickbait thumbnails, but replaces them with community-sourced ones, allowing one to choose a thumbnail frame from the video and have it better put up for a vote, and it does the same thing for the video’s title! It’s made by the same guy who made Sponsorblock.