Such an ado about nothing. Article just states the new directive for party members to address each other with comrade, and that that also means "homosexual" nowadays. :vivian-shrug:
The premise was just a coatrack for them to hang "China bad!" arguments on. Look how homophobic the Chinese are! Look how old and and unhip their politicians are! Look how corrupt their government is! Look how duplicitous those hierarchical Chinese act!
Look how old and and unhip their politicians are
Lol couldn’t imagine
:biden-alert: :trump-moist: :liberalism:
Well not forever, recent enough. It's just a short, shitty article. Someone had to meet their deadline, I'm guessing.
hell yeah, i'm glad the old fuck socially conservative brainworms are dying out
Evidence for this is weak sauce. Article states that the politburo is just old and out of touch with the current lingo and only kids and hipster foreign media noticed or cared. If comrade catches on with the wider populace then subcultures will just shift to a new terms to denote in/out groups.
Alas, the article is from 2016, there are probably more recent pieces talking about the state of gay and trans recognition in the PRC
I once talked to a girl on HelloTalk who was like "it's so improper to take a term as noble as 同志 and use it for non-political reasons!" I don't think she was really homophobic or anything and it was all good after I clarified I was both gay and a communist, just a very funny interaction with a Chinese college student
Who the hell was she? The language police? So what if someone wants to call their gay lovers comrades?
Some 19 year old who probably has some lingering homophobia picked up from her surroundings, but also a very positive opinion of communists.
The people I talk with on HelloTalk trend younger and more educated (lots of college students trying to master their English speaking), but it's really heartwarming to see that most people I talk with have very fond views of communism (even if just the sense of "our government is good"), and hostile homophobia is very rare to see. Everyone seems chill with lesbians, and the worst I've heard about gay men is that they are sometimes too girly, but even then most people have positive responses to my questions. I've only told a few people I'm trans, and that took a little more explaining, but nobody was shitty about it. No Chinese ever called me 人妖.
The Chinese kids are alright.
even if just the sense of “our government is good
Imagine being able to feel this way :cri:
I'm sure a big part of it is nationalism like many American teens, but they do have specific things to be happy about - so many people were horrified to learn about America's pandemic response and how nobody masks anymore.
They've never heard anything else in their lives
They're like American teens in the 1980s before "The People's History of the United States" started being used as a texbook
Not familiar with HelloTalk - if I'd like to reach out to Chinese comrades and talk to them, is it like an ESL app? Or just a standard social media thing?
Language exchange! You put in the languages you know, and the ones you wanna learn, and it matches you up with people doing the opposite. It's got like a feed like most social media, and also text or voice or video chat with other people. Also built in translation tools - both machine translation for text and also a way to correct people's mistakes. You get a couple translations a day for free, but membership isn't too spendy for how much use I get out of it. There are also like learning games and stuff, but I just use it for the social media and chatting aspects.
Turns out there are way more Chinese people learning English than the other way around, so I'm never short of people to chat with if I want. You potentially could use it without speaking Chinese, by relying on translation tools and people wanting to practice their English (my Chinese is still poor so when I chat it's like 80% in English), but it's a language learning app.
I know nothing of the language, but enjoy learning. Will check it out!
If you make an account and ask if anyone wants to chat in English you'll probably get bombarded with messages and find an English speaking pen pal in no time.
I did sign up for a VIP account, and have gotten a few messages already. Chatting with someone about a basic starting point rn actually :)
i'm sure she was a nice person but the sanctification of politics is cringe
This was like 5 or 6 years ago as I recall, I guess it stuck though (referring to party officials as "comrade" again).
Still a market economy though after all that time. I know attitudes toward gay people are largely overblown by more conservative elements in PRC's censorship apparatus. A lot of that is a result of US-backed operations in the region though, when your adversary is willing and able to spend billions on propaganda against your domestic constituency it's hard to combat that with anything other than police powers, and anything "Western" often has to be treated with the same brush. The marketplace of ideas is pretty obviously going to favor the ones with the most capital to burn, definitely if you look at the US for example. My fiance is from Shanghai and over 50, has no negative opinion whatsoever with gay or trans folks.
