Like last year they kept the rainbow flag profile pics up for the entire year. Now they aren’t doing it because they are fearful of some lumpenproletariat boycott. Reactionary workers are worse than pro-lgbt bourgeoisie. I’m gonna side with whoever respects the rights of trans people to literally exist and if neither are gonna do that then fuck both of them!
it blows my mind when I see obviously queer people come into these threads to say that it is fucking terrifying that our very last defense against genocide - tokenizability and monetazability - is evaporating in mere weeks, and then very obviously not queer people come in and say "hey actually the corporations never supported you they were just pretending to drive up their sales"
:what-the-hell:
edit: I'm deeply shocked I need to say this, but us queer communists know that the corporations never supported us and they were just pretending to drive up their sales. I'm making the first statement with the full knowledge that the second is true. The thing I'm complaining about is when people see what can absolutely be interpreted as a nuanced take and instead assume the most bad faith possible bourgeoise-praising.
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right? Straightsplainers/cissplainers are crazy, like what genuinely do you think the odds are that you are talking to a queer person on a communist message board that thinks Target would meaningfully go to bat for them
Lived experience is a valuable source of information, but it's not totalizing. People can indeed be wrong, and ideas like "Tokenism can save us!" tend to be wrong. You can complain that I'm cishet, but I know multiple queer people who would have said exactly what I did (albeit with reference to their own experiences, at least in one case). Lucky for them, they have better things to do than be on this website, so here I am.
friend this is exactly what I'm talking about
"our very last defense against genocide - tokenizability and monetizability - is evaporating in mere weeks" - me actively saying that I do not think tokenism is working to save us
So is it not a defense?
Lived experience isn't totallizing but you understand how seeing an indicator of social tolerance going away is concerning, right? Like I've helped shut down Pride before over cops and corporations but I'm also worried about the current climate, y'dig?
The question to ask right now isn't "how concerning is this really?" But "how do i support my queer comrades?"
I know that public housing would go a long way for my community right now, help us stay in the gay neighborhood, help the runaway kids get on their feet, help folks kick heroine, give us the stability to participate in our institutions. What's your local DSA up to?
As an indicator of social tolerance capitulation to reaction, I 100% agree it is concerning. I merely think the framing of choosing between "reactionary workers or pro-lgbt bourgeoisie" is harmful.
My local DSA are a bunch of Vote Blue asshats.
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Like, the last thing is true, but it's still a worrying indication of which way the wind is blowing (worrying is an understatement)
it absolutely is but they come in with such "Aha! I've caught you! I've identified the hole in your argument, there's no way you already knew that corporations don't like gay people!" energy
Did we read different posts? I know that I tend to come off differently from how I mean, but clearly the interest of the replies here is not entrapment. Look at this part of the OP:
I must give OP relative credit for the very last part, but taken at face value this generally seems to actually be insinuating that the bourgeoisie might be pro-lgbt and therefore worth siding with against reactionary workers. That's a catastrophic error and a case of severe miscommunication on their part if your representation of them is accurate to their actual views.
saying any bourgeoise is better than any proletariat is kind of a whack take but as a queer person, it's not the CEO of Walmart who's going to knock my teeth out at a gas station at night. Did he contribute to the material conditions that right-radicalized much of the proletariat? Yes. Obviously the bourg is the ultimate evil. But no doubt that given the current state of things, the reactionary proletariat needs to be handled ASAP. I get the gut reaction against them.
I was also careful to say "these posts" because (at the time of writing at least) there's nothing too crazy in here but I've seen way worse in some other threads of a similar type.
"handled ASAP"
What do you mean by this specifically? Because until you turn off the reactionary font of capital pouring in brain-scrambling ideology and creating conditions of alienation, this is attempting to bail out the titanic with a spoon. Even if some portion of the proletariat hold reactionary worldviews, there's nothing for us to do about it still strategically except target the reactionary source (capital). Attempting to "handle" them individually with violence a la carte, in class collaboration with the bourgies, is an insane thing to propose on a communist site and should be called out for the reactionary class collaborationism it is
I don't propose a solution, I just think it's just a little rash to go straight for capital while we're still fielding attacks from half of the proletariat too. A solution might look like some kind of rainbow-coalition style organizing to recapture some of the reactionary proles, but I have no idea. One thing I'm very sure of though is that letting this turn into a violent inter-proletarian civil war is about one of the worst possible outcomes, because the bad guys will win, and very quickly
Agreed, and a surefire way to that happening is having half of the proletariat fighting on behalf of "good" corporations and allowing corporations to control the political organizing of a bunch of the proletariat, causing ideological confusion and chaos
if the half of the proletariat fighting on behalf of “good” corporations you're talking about is the liberals, I wouldn't worry too much, they won't fight for anything besides a seat at the brunch table. The only fighting is going to come from the evangelical fundamentalist side.
this is literally true though and not mutually exclusive with this statement
those things were never really defenses against genocide. they were the bourgeoisie lulling us into a false sense of security.
quite an assumption to make. I'm nonbinary, I was raised by lesbians. my grandpa is bisexual. my mom is bisexual. reactionary phobia affects myself and and everyone in my family but i have never for one moment believed that corporate pride was ever going to defend me or my loved ones or the broader LGBTQIA+ community. if anything shallow corporate pride gave the false appearance that we are the cultural hegemony, and paints a target on our back, and allows reactionaries to feel like they're the "real outsiders" when really their culture has always been hegemonic. amerikkka is a genocidal reactionary capitalist empire. never has LGBT pride been hegemonic, and never has corporate pride protected us from reactionaries. hell, the corporations were probably holding onto the names of everyone who ever bought a pride flag or bumper sticker and selling it off to the bloodthristy reactionaries who were sharpening their knives. our last line of defense was never corporate tokenization or commodification of our identities, but mutual aid, solidarity with each other, getting armed, getting organized, providing each other with shelter and protection from reactionaries.
"this is literally true though and not mutually exclusive with this statement" true! accurate. I never said it wasn't. That's what this whole thing is about.
this is actually a solid counterargument. I'm not fully sure I agree but it's a thinker.
no, mutual aid, solidarity with each other, getting armed, getting organized, providing each other with shelter and protection from reactionaries are our best lines of defense. Those fell through. Now we're down to our last one, which is really shitty and barely buys us more than nothing. I'd really really like to get those first, good lines of defense back and that's a great deal of the organizing work that I do.
i understand what you mean, but there's still time (not enough time, obviously, but a nonzero amount) to find some comrades in your local area and help fortify each other for what's coming
btw i'm used to having these discussions with my older family members, who remember the times long before there was any performative pride coming out of corporations. they're still to this day weirded out by it. it simultaneously seems too good to be true (and I think it is too good to be true) and kinda creepy to be "honored" by the very same faceless entities who in the 70s and 80s were bending over backwards to demonize us.
all I'm saying is that being used as an advertising campaign buys us a little time to get that network together, especially when weeks count. The day we stop being useful to capital is the day capital lets the fash go in for the kill. With the amount of momentum that the left has right now, the amount of organizing we can do in just a year or two will mean thousands of lives.
I do not like being in this position. I do not feel like capital cares about you or me. I think any help that they provide us is collateral and unintentional. But the fash will provide us no help, collateral, unintentional, or otherwise.
I'm going to be honest, as the cynical communist bi guy who has been harping on this for years now, that 'time' that advertising bought us was during the Trump presidency, when liberals woke the fuck up for five seconds and smelled what was cooking. They identified all the wrong reasons, but it was during that time that you could make the most difference organizing.
There still could be time, but the prime time to organize is when the opposition is in charge but doesn't have their shit together.
Post-COVID (lol) organizing has been bonkers for me personally, I've never seen so many Biden voters start to want their money back and enter the pipeline. I view Biden as the opposition, and I know you do too, but I think you're not giving enough credit to the ever-radicalizing liberals who are actually starting to peel back the layers. I think more progressives than ever are viewing Biden as opposition.
Doubtful. My bet is that they will still vote for him and any associated lackeys when push comes to shove, we just aren't quite in the middle of the election season propoganda cycle.
Maybe it will be different this time. But we say that every time and it never is.
oh I mean no doubt, they're still going to vote for him, but more of them are gonna be mad about it than ever before, and they're going to be looking for an outlet for that anger. They have too many marginalized friends (or they are marginalized) to swing right about it, and there's only one other way to swing.
🤞
Hear hear
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Do you actually believe "tokenizability" and "monetazability" [sic] are real forces doing anything to keep you safe? This is not a marxist analysis in the slightest. The only material force protecting you is the solidarity of your fellow proletariat, insofar as it can be rallied.
:wonder-who-thats-for:
I also want to entertain your argument though
the bourgeoise, as I hope you'd agree, has some degree of influence over the ideology of the proletariat. This absolutely fits within the confines of a Marxist analysis. Bourg influence has demonstrated its ability to take groups of people - Ukranians, to name one example - and prop them up against an ideological backdrop that is able to morally elevate them above some average demographic. Companies saying "we care about gay people" may be a cash grab, but having the message that someone cares about gay people saturate advertising channels does... well, more than nothing by some margin. It's table scraps but I'll take it. The alternative of everyone pretending we don't exist again takes a spotlight off of us that was at least keeping "queer people exist and should be cared about" in the proletarian consciousness. Less corpo pandering means less people thinking about queer people.
It's impact is actually negative, as it rhetorically and symbolically conjoins LGBT+ rights with Corporate Liberalism. As Marxists, we know that the heightening contradictions of Capitalism will ALWAYS result in an inevitable collapse of the capitalist system and backlash against its institutions. As another user said, there's no more surefire way to make the world resent and hate LGBT+ rights than placing it on a warhead. Economically, having corporate embrace of LGBT+ results in the flag on the warhead scenario. It divides the working class. It confuses what should be a clear conflict of reactionaries vs. progressives by muddling their positions and allowing class enemies to seize control of your own progressive movement. Allowing corporations and Democrats to claim BLM protests in 2020 is another example of the extreme danger and negative impact that this has.
Communists should always struggle for progressive causes, and they should always first and foremost forward the interests of the working class. Allowing class enemies to seize control of your movements and use them for cynical profit-motivated ends that only extracts value from them is exactly what Marxists should be rejecting. You think you are using corporations for your own benefit, but this is false and in fact the relationship is the inverse. Corporations are scapegoating you, using you as a cynical shield and point of profit extraction. You are not in control of the relationship, the multi-billion dollar organizations are. Once you start "working with" them, you are 100% captured because they have the capital.
most people don't know or care what "corporate liberalism" actually is, and if anyone knows what corporate liberalism is and then still turns around and hates gay people, their brain worms belong in a museum
right but we're talking about sportsball helmets and t-shirts. This argument seems to willfully ignore 99% of corpo pride's actual proletarian exposure.
better than a bounty head. at least there's a material interest in keeping your shield intact.
Once they squeeze you dry of value they will throw you to the dogs to eat the scraps. Stop cheering on the process of capital coopting and destroying a progressive movement that will end in an inevitable end of fascist destruction. This is the cycle of Liberalism
they already are throwing us to the dogs. this poster (I think) is saying that even though corporations have nothing substantial to offer lgbt people, the fact that they saw queer people as a target market was some level of utterly unfaithful support, but the fact that even that is dissolved is extremely worrying . we hate corporations, but i also hate that I have to think about how clockable I am so I can judge how much danger I could be in outside of a very small set of queer friendly establishments which are now regularly targeted by chuds anyways. I get so exhausted when people talk only in abstract theory terms when we just don't want to potentially get our heads bashed in at the grocery store. corporations giving up fake solidarity is a signpost that even the people who only served to make money off of you don't see that value anymore.
It's a canary in the coal mine, a worrying sign for sure. That's a far cry from being so confused like OP that you start calling for the canary to save you and protect you.
literally all i'm saying is i'd like a little more time of being squeezed dry to try to slap together a community defense movement. wanting the corporations to be done with pride ASAP today is wanting the queer community to be thrown to the dogs today. If I could run it all back I'd really prefer the queer community not be commodified at all ever but now that we're in this mess we have to play emergency damage control and it's gonna be sloppy
Sure as hell not what OP was saying when they said they would ally with the bourgeoise
yeah OP has some whack takes and I do not claim them, this is more directed at a larger pattern that I kind of expected to and sort of has popped up in this thread
The comments that "popped up in this thread" are responding to weird class collaborationist Liberal takes of OP. You can't really separate them and say "Yeah OP's post was bad, but it's problematic to say that it's bad"
Thank you for saying this. This thread is really giving me some bad vibes.
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