EelBolshevikism [none/use name]
This post kind of grosses me out, especially with the (probably incomplete but w/e) context I’ve gathered from comments on this post, and ESPECIALLY with how I’ve seen it happen before on this site (without the site learning from it either…). I don’t mean that to insult you. While I understand it comes across as patronizing to say, I can’t really blame anyone for internalizing probably the most common brainworm in the Anglosphere.
But ultimately I disagree with your point. I don’t think personal responsibility… exists, actually. Even supposedly impulsive and random excessive purchases can usually be attributed to some unmet mental need or some sort of symptom of a common form of neurodivergency. Though, I don’t want to focus on that too much, because I know it’s a really controversial belief and I’d have to go into literally my entire worldview from scratch to explain how any of it makes sense to me - something I don’t want to do and would make this discussion (and comment lol) even longer and more painful than it already is. I do have a different problem with allowing criticism of the actions of those asking for help, though.
I can’t imagine being someone with a drug addiction, or who wants to numb their suffering by buying alcohol, or otherwise supposedly “pissing it all away” on luxuries anyone more rich and privileged would rarely if ever be judged for buying, even and especially here. Only to be met with disdain for daring to… ask for money with the hope of catching the eye of internet strangers with disposable income. Because buying these luxuries, despite being something others can afford, is seen as questionable merely because you are using the money others gave you (many of which would choose to buy said luxury in a heartbeat instead of giving you that money, and would not receive a single glance of judgement for it!)
Allowing people to criticize people for making the “wrong decisions” which leads to them being homeless (apparently, I think that’s silly and if someone is making decisions that lead to that than there are other extenuating conditions, including sometimes mental ones, that lead to those decisions) is problematic for the same reason allowing people to “criticize Wokeism” or “just ask questions” about race is problematic. It isn’t that actually asking questions about the sociological construct of race is inherently bad, or that *actually criticizing a community in a good-faith way is bad, but that the culture we exist in is so fraught with an inherently bad-faith and incorrect view of the subject that anyone who is trying to “just ask questions”, trying to “speak their mind about the Woke”, or trying to “just give advice to someone struggling” is vastly more likely than not
Do you think people are just born into this world homeless? I mean, some probably are, but a LOT of homeless people come from parents abandoning them after coming out, or running out of money due to (rent/addiction/other factor they can’t control well if at all). Am I going to withhold money from someone for making the “wrong decision” of coming out to a family they thought was safe? Of fucking course not. And I’d ESPECIALLY not dissuade others from helping them- And that’s the issue, the kind of “criticism” that people direct towards those asking for money (yes, even on a leftist forum. Plenty of people here, probably the majority, have just as many ableist and classist brainworms as the rest of the USS of Amerikkka, they’re just rarer and more advanced varieties) does not actually help people asking for help change their actions. Changing your actions is FUCKING HARD, especially when you’re talking about quitting an addiction or trying to figure out what the cheapest food is to buy, or where to sleep best without cops finding you and fucking ruining your life. People who are poor have to do way more shit to do and pay for way more shit than people who are rich have to (boots theory) and a poor person “pissing away” 4000 bucks so they can have the semblance of comfortable living is always going to be treated worse than a rich person who actually literally pisses away 4000 bucks in shitty overpriced beer because they pay for their large group of friends to go to a sports game and decide to pay for all the concessions, and that bias will hold true here, until either we bully everyone into not having that mindset (WHICH IT SEEMS VERY OBVIOUS TO ME IS THE POINT OF THE RULE) or the user base is no longer Amerikkkans.
If someone is suffering from being fucking poor, than the only kind of valid and not inherently harmful criticisms you can give would hardly ever register as criticism to most people, and would be closer to providing free information, like helping with finances by helping them figure out how they can spend less while still getting the same quality of life and things they care about, or giving tips about working out, or sharing cheaper recipes or ways to get drugs in safer and more reliable ways than they already are or giving them information about cheap addiction treatment you happen to have useful info about from the area. And these are all things, again, that would hardly register and hardly anyone would ever report, let alone ban (minus maybe the drugs thing so they don’t get the website swatted, but you know what I mean).
So I see very little purpose to allow people to give unwanted criticism to those who are fucking starving, or getting threatened with arrest for being trans, or struggling with fucking drug addiction, because unless those people are afraid of free numbers and columns there’s probably only a few situations where someone would take offense to something that isn’t just motivated by the same ambient fucking classism everyone has everywhere and to be completely frank I don’t think those exceedingly rare situations are worth the risk of allowing people to simultaneously shit on homeless people while hiding under a veneer of “civility”, which the remanding or removal of this rule would cause.
If you think giving money to the person is a bad idea, than just don’t do it, and everyone “responsible” will do the same thing as you.
And to be even more completely honest, this is a trend I see repeatedly and it is blatantly created by the discomfort of the privileged (like you or I probably are in comparison to many people on this comm who post) needing to have a constant stream of money to live, because they want the discomfort of seeing a struggling person to go away after they “buy” it with enough money. And I understand that impulse, because seeing people struggle sucks. But this is fundamentally a form of punching down; It’s a response that blames the one struggling for your discomfort (and, no matter how reasonable it seems to blame them, no it fucking isn’t), instead of the systems and people who put them and you in this fucked situation in the first place.
appropriate all Republican memes. Red is OUR color
lol apparently France is doomed to have it’s entire history be just people mad at the upper class and leaders gaslighting them
i’m so sick of human emotions being a problem to be solved rather than indicative of a person’s situation (or sometimes they do need solving because of chronic emotional imbalances etc but that is outside of the scope of this comment)
So does anyone have on thoughts on voting for Kopmala over abortion issues specifically? I genuinely can’t think of a policy of hers that is remotely different from the Republican policies, except for maybe the extremely slight possibility that she might be better on abortion rights because she’s a woman. I don’t know if I genuinely believe this is the case and I’m so sick of the whole “harm reduction” voting for )
Afaik it’s just legislation requiring stuff like ID which leads to PornHub pulling out because they don’t want to pay operation fees, so all of the exploitative parts of the porn industry will still be there, just without anyone actually observing the products of it
Or in other terms it’s not really good or bad, it’s just a company being cheap as usual (which is usually bad, but in this case is just meh)
don’t revolve around a specific coming out narrative or concretized “lifestyles” arrayed by identity tag like in western english “LGBTQ” movements.
literally no gay person in the west does that they just take pride in the “identity tags” because its a great way to be explicit about things the weirdos hate which feels nice to do
this stuff feels so goddamn invalidating to queer people in western countries. we invented these labels, they were never intended for NGO’s or imperialism. they were meant for us. i refuse to treat them as if the forces of imperialism own them (and I therefore take immense offense to their use in pinkwashing). but don’t confuse us ACTUAL QUEER PEOPLE in western countries with the people using the idea of us without our permission or consent to hurt ACTUAL QUEER PEOPLE in other countries. We do not support nor condone the political misuse of us, and the people who coined these terms and worked towards queer liberation never, ever wished for them to be used this way.
so please don’t fucking treat the queer community, LGBTQ+ community, whatever, as if it only exists as a distinction to oppress and consume, as if our own conceptions and ideas of ourselves are completely invalid and made up. we made these distinctions for ourselves and not for the patriarchal, cis, heteronormative straight fucks up in palaces made of skulls to use them maliciously to hurt others. fuck the imperial machine not just for the result of that specifically but also for tying our community to murder and conquest when no normal fucking gay person here in the capitalist hellhole West ever asked for that. pete buttigieg does not speak for the LGBTQ+ community.
of course places should have their own ability to develop queer theory and terms and ideas. but that’s exactly why the misuse of english queer terminology pisses me off so much, it’s reduced it to an imperialist scheme in the eyes of the world instead of the individual stepping stone it’s creators and the people who DIED for it fighting cops on the street intended it to be.
square glasses are antisemitic