You overstated the gap between western countries and existing socialist states

I stated the legal protections that exist in the west that do not exist in existing socialist states (sans Cuba). This is not an overstatement, this is fact.

I am not trying to convince you of anything at the moment, just exchanging information. I can’t provide sources for the prior topics we were discussing as that is something I’d have to research prior. For those topics, I can’t do better atm, so if it is unsatisfactory for you, you can always exit. But I don’t think this applies when it comes to queer topics, at least not as much.

I never brushed them off as though they were nothing, I highlighted that they aren’t as solid as you claim

I claimed they have certain legal protections. Marriage equality, housing/employee protection, adoption. This is fact, it is not something merely claimed by me.

you frame it as though China is getting worse over time and the west is getting better while the opposite is true.

I didn’t say this. My point was there are factually better laws extant in the west today that don’t exist in modern-day socialist states besides Cuba.

This is the kind of frankly bad-faith bullshit you’ve been stating that makes it abundantly clear from my perspective that you don’t seem to care at all about what I say, but instead are fishing for “gotchas.” I’ll bold this so it’s clear: Less discrimination is better, obviously. Overstating the gap between countries when it comes to social rights in order to push a narrative that this gap is due to failings on the part of the country lagging behind is illogical and ignores the reality of how social change comes to be, and undermines the ongoing efforts of queer activists in socialist countries.

The legal protections I mentioned, again, are all factually true. Allow me to rephrase the part where I said it was ‘‘miles ahead’’. There are much better laws in place for queer people in the west than the socialist countries that exist today, asides from Cuba.

However, I will say that I am inclined to believe that the parity is a failure on part of the country. Whose else is it, do we just not hold countries accountable, now? Or is everything just always explained as being the West’s fault? That seems illogical to me.

Prolewiki frames social progress as a process, not as a snapshot. In doing so, it’s documenting the progressive movements in socialist countries and what struggles they face, it doesn’t try to document a list of what’s presently there because history is not a set of disconnected snapshots but a process.

Does a framing of social progress as a process mean that you overlook flaws and negatives and what’s missing?

How can you even begin to honestly document the struggles faced when you haven’t even mentioned the fact that they don’t have some of the most significant rights.

Both are necessary, having a good view of existing conditions while analyzing trends, and Equaldex lacks that historical background analysis and analysis of trends. This is what you deliberately are choosing to ignore, and what I have pointed out this entire time.

Then why can only one be seen to the total omission of the other? You criticize Equaldex for lacking one but not Prolewiki for lacking the other.

Furthermore, Prolewiki does NOT have a good view of existing conditions. I do not take issue with trend analysis. Go for it! I take issue with not calling a spade a spade and ignoring what is in the here and now altogether. That is not something that will be read as logical to me.

Just because it’s a process, in our current account of things, we are going to skip over what’s missing and painful right now? How can you even work towards what’s missing if you don’t even mention ‘‘I don’t have X’’?

This is as absurd to me as hearing someone trying to document how economic inequality has changed over time without even bothering to mention the facts of what exactly is wrong right now. Lets not even mention the problem of housing, the wage gap by race and gender, unemployment, etc, because it’s a process! It’s not a snapshot!

To be clear: this is not intended to be inflammatory, but I am trying to convey why this kind of view just makes no sense to me.

Benefits: Benefits Drawbacks: “Process”

This is clearly cherry-picking and unbalanced and if you work like that it doesn’t matter how abysmal a country could be in theory because the drawbacks will always be reframed as a process while you only really account for the benefits, resulting in a distorted picture and account of the country.

Also, another counterpoint would be, how come you don’t call the problems in the west “a process” too, then? The drawbacks are just process when looking at socialism, but the west? You don’t seem to have an issue with calling their drawbacks for what they are, drawbacks, without calling it “process” there. Seems to be inconsistent to me.

The negatives are not downplayed or glossed-over

And yet you have never stopped to acknowledge them or give them their due weight. You write one or two sentences, at the most, on how China is not perfect in the most general and nebulous of terms, but that is all one gets, before focusing the entirety of your responses on why China is doing well.

How about you give me an equally lengthy answer on the areas where China is performing poorly, and not being up to the mark where it should, flaws in the government, problems faced by people living there today, things like that? Can you actually do that?

Cuba is not an exception

Cuba is absolutely the exception in currently existing socialist countries, this is fact. Name one other socialist country today that has legalized gay marriage— or any of the other legal protections I mentioned earlier. There isn’t one.

queer rights in Cuba are not perfect.

I didn’t say it was “perfect”. I said it was ideal and there wasnt anything to say about it to critique it, within the context of our conversation (i.e. a comparison between queer rights under socialist and non-socialist countries). Compared to the non-socialist countries with progressive laws, Cuba isn’t doing noticeably worse in this regard to warrant discussion.

You were downplaying Scandinavian imperialism just a few comments ago, and you said Cuba is “perfect” with regards to queer rights.

Wasn’t downplaying, I asked, because I’d never heard of Scandinavian imperialism before; and ceded the point (for the purposes of the discussion) when given evidence. As for Cuba, didn’t call it perfect, that is your wording, not mine.

On the why behind queer rights in the west: I’ll preface by saying this is speculative and I’ve never thought about the why much before, believing most countries just remain the way they are for the most part.

I think that secularism and other thought emerging from the enlightenment era played a role in forming the bedrock where queer rights would be discussed more openly.

In the US specifically, in the 70’s, the stonewall riots and queer lobbying lead to the removal of homosexuality from the DSM as a mental disorder.

I think that the shift of focus in favour of individualism replacing traditional family values (even if far from completely, I am aware MAGAts and conservative and/or christians make up a significant portion of the US) allows more space for gay liberation. Though to be clear I am not saying the US is ideal for gay people, it is just an example. West Europe is less conservative and affirming (likely Scandinavia being the best in this regard).

Collectivist cultures are inherently less likely to be able to give room to such things coming about because they want everyone to conform to the same norm, which is always going to be heterosexuality (if not within a traditional marriage). Gay people don’t come out to their parents in Asia (mostly collectivist cultures) because of the emphasis on “furthering the parents’ bloodline” (amongst beliefs that it is unnatural and all sorts of other bigotry, of course).

It has been my idea that we’ve had a lot of activists over the last century (possibly prior as well) in the west. Perhaps due to language barriers I can’t say I have personally heard enough to say the same about the east, though I have seen japanese activists pushing for this for a while the last year or so.

“Social progress” is too broad a term for me to be able to assess just like that, but specifically in the context of queer rights specifically I am more or less content with where they’re at in West Europe; they are declining sharply in the US under Trump, though.

I don’t personally see it improving in socialist countries in a significant way any time soon.

Though I wouldn’t be surprised if it happened before the turn of the century (it’d be about goddamn time), I just wouldn’t personally care since it’s not happening in my lifetime. I can’t envision myself living there because it’s not happening in time. If it’d happen sooner, I could, but that’s just not realistic.

Just do it.

It’s a lot of people but big tech can easily get back those numbers.

Let’s see how the tendency unrolls over the long-term.

Tldr or excerpt please.

Is the world even doing anything significant to oppose Israel? None of the states and governments that matter here are cutting back against Israel (US and EU, where Israel draws most of its funding and arms sales from).

Won’t work, why? Tldr, anybody?

That’s just capitalism. But yeah, they can just bailout since the concept of separate legal entities means that individual investors aren’t held responsible for corporate losses.

Zuck lobbied the US for age verification laws, won’t Altman just lobby them for this, too?

Where can I see them? I’d like to

And France, especially Germany, and a fair bit of Europe, sadly. France is being lobbied hard by Israel to fast-track bans against Palestine action.

3.58 to 3.56 billion isn’t really significant because in the long term these sort of mega corporations can easily recover that many users.

But I like they’re getting covered in debt, though idk how far it is from collapse as these numbers don’t make much sense to me.

That is fair. I don’t have sources ready on me to provide on these topics, I’d have to look for them first. I guess when I’m not referring to sources/facts etc I am usually coming from less of a position of “demonstrating why X is true” and more of “this is what I know and I’m just trying to pull what information you have”, if that makes sense.

Regarding the point on queer rights I wanted to go over:

I listed some significant progress for queer rights earlier but it seems like you just glossed over them as being “just some legal benefits”, because discrimination still exists?

I’d like to ask you:

• Is marriage equality insignificant to you?
• Is protection against discrimination in work and housing insignificant to you?
• Are hate crime protections insignificant to you?
• Is the right to adopt insignificant?

Are these things not significant?

I view them as life-changing protections. Please don’t shrug them off as if they are nothing. These are massive, massive improvements in quality of life, and they deserve to be acknowledged as such.

I cannot see you as being truly concerned for queer populations if these things just evoke a “meh, whatever” from you.

The phenomenon that younger generations are more progressive is more-or-less universally applicable, it isnt unique to China. While it is true that discrimination sadly occurs everywhere, it is significantly lower in Scandinavia. Compare any of those countries on Equaldex.com to China and you can see an in-depth breakdown of just how far ahead they are.

Is significantly less discrimination a good thing to you? Or does it not matter because it’s not completely gone yet, and having more discrimination is thus preferable?

Furthermore, you said that socialist countries do better in queer rights than peer capitalist countries, when this is demonstrably false. Compare Thailand and Taiwan to China. Both perform better in terms of queer rights than China, but neither are socialist.

Incidentally I have actually read the prolewiki’s entry on queer rights in socialist countries. I have read everything they cover on queer issues. There is a glaringly unbalanced coverage of queer issues, with everything being clearly cherry-picked. Not a single one of the countries’ flaws or setbacks are mentioned, none of the lacking protections or rights are mentioned. It came off as very dishonest to me and was a big part of my reason to not engage with that wiki again. I have already seen these countries through a reliable source that documents queer rights that I prefer to use (equaldex).

It strikes me as strange that any real negative or lack in China/socialist countries will always be downplayed and glossed over at best and simply not covered at all at worst. I wonder if this is just a Marxist-Leninist tendency or if it is shared by all Communists.

I will grant that free GAC in the past was amazing, and Cuba. There’s nothing really to say wrt to queer rights in Cuba as it’s already ideal in that regard, but Cuba is very much the exception in currently socialist countries (not a single of the other countries today are anything like it in that regard).

I am not “pinkwashed”, I routinely criticize the west and imperialism myself. I criticize everything.

Though it’s weird, isn’t pinkwashing basically a subtype of brainwashing? I thought you didn’t believe in “brainwashing”, in favour of moral licensing, according to your guide.

You don’t have to if you don’t want to.

I can move to the other point I wanted to go over if you’re still interested.

got a source on that?

China doesn’t sell weapons to the US and Israel?

Hmm, that reads the same as British East India Company-era colonialism tbh.

On the sale of weapons: doesn’t china sell weapons, too, though? A brief answer will do.

Which countries, specifically, has Scandinavia conducted an imperialistic campaign over? Please specify the countries. So far you have kept it nebulous.

or is it exclusively through this indirect mechanism of end-stage-capitalism imperialism that it occurs just generally/globally?

If China can respect Taiwan’s desire to maintain the status quo I have no issue with that. Its been on the news that China has been using the Iran war as cover, partly to prepare for an attack on Taiwan with the ships being equipped with military missiles and the sort. I haven’t looked into that claim, however.

If you’re saying all western countries play into imperialism by means of capitalism, then there’s two things to say here: 1- China hasn’t fully transitioned to complete communism yet, even if it is transitioning over time. Meaning China also engages in capitalism. This makes china involved in the same process of imperialism, even if to a smaller extent. Do you recognize that?

2- In the socialist framework, Communism is seen as the natural end consequence, and countries will naturally transition from capitalism to communism. By that reasoning, according to socialists, isn’t it “only a matter of time” before the west also communizes? So why demonize the west? Are the west simply imperialistic because they are inherently “evil” like that, or does historical analysis on the etiology of current conditions / diamat not apply when analyzing the west?

You say that the global south is accelerating in its development because of China, can you give me data/graphs for this claim?

Land-grabbing and seizing other resources unethically also constitutes imperialism, though. China keeps trying to bully the countries that have broken off from China (i.e. Taiwan and Hong Kong). I hope you can recognize that without blind support for China and asserting the secession of some of its parts was/is “invalid” (or “never happened”).

There’s also the sea-grabbing china has been doing in the sea below it where it’s got conflicts w the phillipines, Malaysia/Indonesia and other countries in the area where from what I last remember china was conducting unauthorized operations in the area despite nobody in the region recognizing the area as China’s— though this may be off.

you say china isn’t imperialist by “socialist consensus” but that’s not really relevant here; of course supporters of XYZ party/ideology aren’t going to criticize a member. I am not a socialist, outside of socialism it seems pretty clearly to be imperialist.

I have to ask this before I can answer that question: Is reformism acceptable under socialism, when it is otherwise looked down upon?

I’d like to focus on one point at a time.

I didn’t say socialist countries haven’t been under siege, I said there are ones that haven’t been in a long time. When was China last under siege? There’s always drama between it and US sure but the US depends on China too and it’s not like Cuba where it’s being obliterated because of the US.

Without being significantly attacked by imperialism in a long time, and with clearly being an economic superpower, what is China’s excuse for not performing on the same level as Scandinavian countries?

Granted China engages in imperialism itself— and I hope you can recognize that and not disregard imperialism when it occurs under socialist countries/China.