https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/3448324
LGBT itself is a concept created by western capitalists to divide the working people
What the proletariat wants is sexual liberation and equal rights
When youre almost there but in the last mile cut the wheel hard, careening through the front windows of a pre-k daycare because you're angry that you're "not allowed" to say the n-word or call people slurs in casual conversation
The concept of being gay didn't exist before western capitalists and was created to divide the proletariat? Are you out of your fucking mind?
Get in here and explain yourself coward
In what specific year of history did the capitalists invent being gay @jlyws123@lemmygrad.ml ?
What exactly does sexual liberation and equal rights mean to this person?
If I had to give them the benefit of the doubt: that prior to Western Capitalism (Imperialism, etc.), being queer (in whatever way; being attracted to the same gender, identifying with a gender other than your agab, not fitting in with either gender's norms, etc.) was not an "identity" the way it is today; that, like with race, the distinction is made to otherize and oppress (though, of course, while that oppression is happening, those identities can also be a rallying point for those oppressed cultures themselves).
Some intersectionalists and Marxists themselves might argue that "identities" in that sense only exist in the context of minoritization. Of course, the quickest glance at Chinese law would show that queer people are minoritized (though less than in the US in many respects) and one could further argue that America is trying to rainbow-wash western cultural hegemony using its exports, but I feel like that's not quite the position we see in the OOP.
I think there is at least a plausible hypothetical context in which the censorship of those rainbow-washed exports makes sense, in the circumstance of wanting to develop a Chinese cultural understanding and acceptance of queerness rather than having the American understanding dictated to them. Whether this has any bearing on actual policy, I don't know, but it's imo the stronger version of the actual position taken by people rightly called social chauvinists.
At minimum, men loving men was completely normalized for millennia, None of our religions ever had weird clauses about "sodomy". The first anti-queer laws and anti-queer attitudes were direct imports from the west in the 19/20th century. If you want to fight for queer rights it would be easier to appeal to the Chinese equivalent of "RETVRN" sentiments than associate yourself with the culture that both introduced homophobia in the first place and is using it as an excuse to commit genocide.
Was it completely normalized? I had the impression that it was sort of a "don't ask, don't tell" thing in that it wasn't a basis of proactive persecution but it was kind of kept under wraps.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Song_of_the_Yue_Boatman
The Chinese idiom, ‘斷袖之癖’ /tuan ɕiou ʈʂɻ̩ pʰi/ (the predilection of the cut sleeve), comes from a historical account wherein an emperor’s male lover fell asleep against his sleeve, so the emperor cut it off lest he disturb him. The idiom has then bore the signification of homosexuality.
https://www.linguisticsociety.org/content/im-cut-sleeve
It was pretty openly practiced.
An emperor is a pretty small and potentially idiosyncratic sample. I'm not saying it isn't the case, but this doesn't go very far in helping to tell.
The cut sleeve story is about the Han Emperor Ai and his partner Dong Xian. During the Han dynasty, about a third of the emperors were bisexual. It was common enough that Sima Qian even included a chapter on it (佞幸列傳 Biographies of Male Favorites). Sons were supposed to succeed their father, not empresses, concubines, or male favorites. Nevertheless, Emperor Ai basically tried to make Dong Xian his successor. It failed spectacularly. Towards the end of the Han dynasty, we also know that General Liang Ji, his servant Qin Gong, and wife Sun Shou were a throuple. A century before them, General Huo Guang, his favorite Feng Zidu, and wife Xian were a throuple as well.
Homosexual relationships among the ruling class are attested back to the Zhou dynasty. Han Fei wrote about Duke Ling of Wei falling in love with Mizi Xia and giving him special treatment as a result. Historical criticism of these gay relationships concerned vanity and being unqualified, not the gay aspect. The male favorite phenomenon ended by the Song dynasty.
Eventually Confucianism caught on, placing emphasis on the (patriarchal, heterosexual) family. Of course, economic systems based on private property tend to develop these ideologies, so China shouldn't be viewed as exceptional. They have Confucianism, we have the nuclear family. Whatever. Point is, heterosexual marriage and reproduction were socially important, but this wasn't a rejection of homosexual relationships per se. It did however make it very difficult to have a lifelong gay relationship. The Ming-era bureaucrat Shen Defu wrote that in Fujian there was an institution of homosexual marriage where a younger and older man would move in together and sometimes adopt. After 20 years, the older one would find a wife for the younger man, and they'd break up. However, there are some exceptional cases.
There's the Three kingdoms and Six Dynasties period (I think) story of Wang Zhongxian and Pan Zhang who are described to be "as affectionate as husband and wife." They were intelligentsia rather than royalty. After a lifelong relationship, they died together and were mourned by everyone who knew them.
Speaking of the middle class (or whatever, sorry I'm not well versed in historical Chinese class systems), there's a record stating that during the Liu Song dynasty (275-290 CE), MLM relationships were so common that it was causing estrangement between husband and wife. That said, people often exaggerate about this sort of thing. Men were legally allowed to have multiple lovers, but women were not. Women were also disadvantaged, so information on sapphic relationships is scarce.
In the 1700s, Li Guiguan and Bi Yuan exchanged vows of fidelity and were basically married. One was an actor, and the other was a bureaucrat. At the time, actors were low class, not respected, and overlapped with prostitution. As a result, there were centuries of legislation criminalizing these types of relationships, but enforcement wasn't common. I think it was most consistently repressive during the Qing dynasty, but I forget all the details. Unfortunately, official-actor relationships are the only example of lower class homosexuality I can think of. Historians were not rolling with the LGBT peasantry. 😔
I would recommend reading Li Yu (1611–1680). He was a Ming dynasty writer that apparently wrote erotica (I have not read it) as well as gay stories (which I have read). He's the legend that wrote The Fragrant Companion. It's a sapphic play with a happy ending written in the 17th century. Incredible. There's also an English translation published. He also wrote “A Male Mencius’ Mother” (Nan mengmu jiaohe sanqian 男孟母教合三遷) which is an MLM story. It's weird, and expresses skepticism in lifelong gay relationships. It depicts pederasty basically. Good read if you're studying this subject, but bad read if you just want to read gay romance.
Saving this because it's got a lot of history to read and research
Thanks I did a group project on it last year so I was just going through my prior research
You did wonderful work. It really shows how much effort you put into it
Aw thanks! It was just for an elective, so a bit shallow. I'm going to do my senior project on the same topic, so as long as I don't have a mental breakdown, expect a much more thorough post in the future!
I don’t know if having every country on Earth go through their own Stonewall and their own decades of violent gay oppression/resistance conflict is really the way to do things
I also don’t think is fair or realistic to expect queer people to just accept the suffering of other queer people like them if it happens in another country
Yue Boatman is a better example. Idk it's not exactly easy to find English sources for this stuff.
Charitably, they mean a man can fuck dudes without it being gay because the concept of gay didn't exist.
The second comment especially shows the complete lack of investigation of the commenter as it is directed towards Alunyanneгs, a comrade who lives in the global south
Every blue moon you'll get a user who's been around for awhile who's only chimed in on the geopolitics stuff come out of nowhere with shit like this.
We've had our fare share. Some lasted years then I guess one day they woke up and decided they wanted to partake in the worlds shittest takes contest.
Not being informed enough or not reading theory then just getting around through vibes alone the one day they get unlucky and their vibe are off and miss
Imagine anyone think they have a shot against me in that competition.
Well, your takes aren't even bad half the time.
It's more akin to a dog advising you on how to get treats from their owner whose house you have broken into.
You don't have enough time to figure out why the dog is talking in this situation, even if it is mildly interesting. Its advice is also unlikely to help.
I have to fave this bc i believe in communicating thru slapped together custom memes but it's hard to read + amazon prime show iirc + random screenshot of a social media-based organism that couldn't survive outside a lab
I love how every picture from a non Western country is always some military or police figure or building behind some scary looking object like a fence or a wall. Even though the fence in this picture is clearly decorative, and the person in the picture is clearly in symbolic dress uniform. Nothing about what's happening in the scene is functional for defense or control, it's all decorative or symbolic, but western media always uses pictures like this to evoke some feeling of fear. It's so disgustingly hilariously obvious and they always do it. I'll never forget years ago some picture was floating around about some evil secret government camp, when it turns out the photographer literally put their camera in a drainage ditch to make it look like there was a wall, and used all sorts of gray filters to make it look bleak. When in reality it was just a nice building right beside a nice city block.
during the first half of your comment I was thinking "I gotta find that picture showing them putting the camera in the drainage ditch" and then you mentioned it. GOOD post
I tried but failed, I'm having trouble because I don't remember much about the article itself so keywords are hard to come up with
I haven't given up but it's gonna be pure luck to find anything given how trash web search is now
See, this is what happens if you don't ban people based on their transphobic votes on posts and comments. Now I know there's 13 accounts on there that are absolutely rotten with brainworms. Uphold Transcomrade69-thought!
The combination of that avatar and this take is giving me a headache
My right-wing uncle says stupid shit like this. Claims that the US and EU are trying to queer the global south as a form of genocide because they're scared of our rising birthrates.
While a bad viewpoint that’s not what social-chauvinism means and is in fact the opposite. Social-chauvinism is when you are pro-imperialist for your own country. This person is obviously not an imperialist and thus not a social-chauvinist, just a person with reactionary views
For clarity, I'm stretching the useage of Chauvinism here. While you're correct that Lenin is referring to imperialists dressing their imperialism in leftist garb, Chauvinism, in general, is any kind of belief in the superiority of one's group over another.
OP clearly thinks they're better then the queers and our supposed bourgeois decadence.
I think leftists can have a little word play, as a treat
Yeah Lenin was specifically talking about parties in Europe that were supporting their respective country's war efforts WW1 while also calling themselves socialists. Completely incoherent goofballs.
The inevitable conclusion of libs using "but those brown people would kill you for being queer" to justify continuing to bomb the brown people. Thank you liberals for continuously using minority groups as your scape goat to do whatever evil thing you were already doing and getting them more vilified in the process. You are super cool and we are all grateful to get to watch you lose elections on our behalf
this Gay bullshit makes me argue with my wife a lot so someone must've invented it to trick me
at women in bikinis
