In general but mainly referring to lgbt+ struggles.
I think it’s mostly just cuz most successful socialist movements took off in more rural, socially conservative areas. If the population your organize in has brain worms there’s only so much you can really do about that in the short term, base and super structure an all that. The socialist states that have managed to develop, improve education, and have a more urban complexion, tend to be getting better about LGBT stuff, slower than they should but they are getting better.
I also think media isolation and censorship doesn’t help. I get some of that is understandable and necessary to prevent foreign fuckery, but it does sadly have the side effect of making communication between people who are geographically distant difficult. People tend to get more tolerant of those different then them when they have some line of communication, not being able to converse with LGTB people from cultures more tolerant of them makes it harder it view them as normal humans like anyone else.
The socialist states that have managed to develop, improve education, and have a more urban complexion, tend to be getting better about LGBT stuff
great example of this is the GDR. most advanced state in europe regarding LGBT+ rights, until they were annexed by west germany
Even in the rural ones, we see significant progress in the more developed areas (the Shanghai Communist Party cadres for example have been harshly critical of recent government actions around gender.)
I know for a fact PCUSA had a section of its candidates and cadre go full terf and formed a faction to try and change the party leadership and constitution into an anti-lgbtq+ formation.
They got purged, were salty they lost, tried to form their own "true pcusa" after stealing several party accounts, and now mainly spend their time trying to smear the party saying it's, somehow, a drug smuggling organization that runs brothels out of Staten Island N.Y and Vermont.
I'll also add on that many of the party lower and upper leadership are LGBTQ+, and enjoy building the party. The only reason that I've seen LGBTQ+ people leave the party is for the same reasons Cis-het people leave: Ideology. They join the party either thinking it's one thing, or with the concept of being the one true leftist with the plan to lead the revolution, then grow disillusioned with the fact that party was not what they were looking for. I'll simply say that if you're joining a party, do your research! Read their constitution, ideological documents, listen to some of their media, see if it's in line with your own or if you're willing to enter and align yourself with the Bolshevik ideology.
a drug smuggling organization that runs brothels out of Staten Island N.Y and Vermont.
wtf based, as long as they're worker owned brothels.
Many places are rural and relied on having large families to take care of the elders and their work.
None of this precludes an acceptance of queer people. Most indigenous cultures, for instance, have more than binary gender roles. If anything, large multi-generational families decreases the social pressure for any one individual to have kids since you’re all raising them collectively.
Europeans don’t have a monopoly on being shitty people
Sure, but they certainly have a talent for it.
I speculate that the parties did not lag behind the general population, they're merely being unfairly compared to the modern standards of some loud factions in Hollywood, this extremely based lemmy instance, and the fact that in spite of massive resistance, Obama invented gay marriage in 2015.
The state does not always project the views of the majority- I remember a study in 2016 that said that 50% of Republicans and 48% of Democrats were still uncomfortable living next to a gay neighbor - let alone all the demographics that didnt respond to the survey lmao
I'm reading this as ML/M parties in the Global South as opposed to the Western Left.
Oftentimes, social progress is predicated on, and therefore lags behind, economic progress. It's very hard to protest for gay rights when you first have to protest for not dying of starvation. Capitalism may be economically exploitative, but it has allowed economic progress in the West through the huge amassing of wealth. People in the West were richer and had more treats, and could therefore focus their attention on social issues, because even if they still lived under Capitalism, they got the long end of the stick. Consequently, everyone else in the world is poorer, and are still struggling with economic progress. Social progress has been stifled in the Global South because they are still focused on not starving. Even in AES, which have had greater and more equitable economic progress than their capitalist counterparts in the Global South, the West has had a huge head start by developing Capitalism first, and were therefore also the first to develop modern social progress.
A good example of this is the suffragette movement in the United States. Women's rights had been a topic of conversation since before America was even founded, but it never got off the ground because for most of that time the only women who were educated enough and had enough time to worry about it were rich white women who's husbands probably owned slaves. Most women were stuck in the homestead, which acted as a physical and metaphorical prison, separating them from other women, and disallowing any class consciousness or collaboration. It was only after industrialization where women began working together in factories that they were able to collectively fight for their rights. The same thing happened in the USSR and China. Once they industrialized, women's rights saw more and more support. So we see how the economic progress of industrialization lead to the social progress of women. As AES and the rest of he Global South meets economic parity with the West, I expect there to be growth in their own LGBTQ struggles.
On the other hand, a decrease in economic progress would also lead to a decrease in social progress. We can see this happening now in the United States. As wages have stagnated and more people have become poorer, we have seen attacks on women's right to abortion, an increase in anti-LGBTQ legislation, and overall a more conservative populous.
In the soviet union and its sphere conservatism was in general a thing even before the various revolutions. For a very long time (read even now among the older generation of scholars) LGBTQ issues were/are considered mental illness or decadence brought on by capitalism. In the meantime it was difficult for any movement for such rights to take hold because it would be suppressed in no times, due to its potential ties to the west, and to what was seen as stemming from a very bad moral character. Basically, in this regard the Eastern European and soviet part of the world was pretty reactionary and that stunted the development on the topic in that part of the world
There's been a very successful campaign in the imperial core to paint queerness as an expression of bourgeois individualism. Queerness-as-fashion, queerness-as-urbane-liberalism, queerness-as-a-consumer identity that you can market products to. Coupled with the pinkwashing imperial core nations like to do to excuse their horrendous actions elsewhere, it's not all that surprising that ML movements - many based in countries where much of the population is illiterate, never mind versed in modern gender and sexuality studies- would shun the LGBT struggle.
That said the Bolsheviks decriminalized homosexuality in 1921 and Castro officially apologized to queer Cubans in 2010 for their internment in the aftermath of the revolution.
It wasn't just a decriminalisation streak. During the early Soviet years there was a wide-ranging LGBT debate and multiple efforts to develop LGBT research and services, especially from the Constructivist/Cosmist factions.
Even the decriminalisation wasn't just a sweeping reform, since they deliberately didn't put the law back in with their new legal code. This pamphlet shows the opinion of the progressive factions of the SU on what the law reform meant (slight cringe anti ML stuff from the guy in the intro)
Finally, several prominent Bolshevik leaders were LGBT, most notably Georgy Chicherin the first Foreign Minister of the SU and a close associate of Stalin.
Unfortunately, open LGBT people were widely associated not just with the upper classes but those close to the Tsar (since those were the only people powerful enough to be openly gay). Even though much of the peasantry was openly gay, the proletariat was very conservative due to the 18th century francophile reforms, the Tsar had had some of the strictest anti- LGBT laws ever (including anti-lesbian laws, which were quite rare elsewhere) and authors like Tolstoy using gay characters to illustrate corruption and decadence didn't help. Nor did the prejudice of some of the Soviet Leaders. Finally, we need to remember that Gay people were not separated from paedophiles in many people's heads, and it suited the conservative factions to keep it that way.
Ultimately the debate fell on the side of LGBT being a mental illness and it was recriminalised, but it was a halting step forwards for the time.
According to Mike Duncan, it was more part of abolishing the tsarist order of things and all the old laws.
Like Atreides said, it was more part of generally throwing out of the entire tsarist legal system as illegitimate. But I still think it counts for something that at least from 1921 to 1953, gay people were relatively legally safe in the USSR at a time when the UK was still carrying out chemical castration.
Edit: But maybe I've been misinformed, see @Mardoniush 's more in-depth historical analysis above.
That said the Bolsheviks decriminalized homosexuality in 1921 and Castro officially apologized to queer Cubans in 2010 for their internment in the aftermath of the revolution.
The NPA has also been pretty great on LGBT rights:
In 2005, the NPA conducted the first recorded gay marriage in the history of the Philippines.[37] In contrast to the deeply religious nature of mainstream Filipino society, the NPA leadership openly accepts gay and lesbian people into their ranks, though the attitudes of members within the various and largely isolated guerrilla branches can vary.
Filipino president Duterte has mocked the NPA's acceptance of LGBT members, erroneously claiming that '40 percent' of NPA members are gay.[38] Duterte also claimed that NPA guerrillas once attempted to sexually seduce his son.[39] NPA co-founder Jose Maria Sison confirmed that the NPA openly accepted LGBT people and called Duterte's claims "unbelievable".[40]
Because we are all pedo's dontcha know. No red blooded heterosexual socialist ever diddled kids. It's only the d-erate liberal homos that seek to undermine their pure party.
The post doesn't really resonate with me, but I believe they are trying to say something along the lines of "people in these times and places were only exposed to the concept of homosexuality in their communities in cases where a child molester was exposed, since that would be 'big news'".
To me, that doesn't sound right, but I don't know enough about what was going on to know how the average worker viewed homosexuality. If anything yeah it's poorly worded because you don't want to sound like you are conflating sexual orientation with pedophilia, and if it's unclear to anyone (you and everyone who upvoted you), then that should be rephrased or omitted.
That was indeed what I was getting at. And I specifically mentioned it because a lot of Russians have told me that the russian word for homosexual comes from the greek "Pederast", and especially in tzarist Russia there would not have been widespread knowledge of human sexuality, due to Russia being a feudal shit-state. And when I mentioned the pedophilia in the post, I was refering to the reasoning given by Stalin and the soviets when they recriminalized it sometime in the 20's.
I should have titled better. I'm curious why the bourgeois decadence line was so accepted by so many major western Marxist parties when the general left seemed outside of Marxism seemed united behind lgbt+ struggles.
If I look up the history of any large communist party active in my area the earliest they changed that line was 1994. From Avakianites to trots all actively were anti LGBT at the height of struggle.
if this is about people not wanting hornyposts here I swear to fucking god…
it didn’t help that the western gay and queer culture was easily clocked as bourgeois decadence.
I feel like this is verging on the attitude that OP is talking about
Straight western culture is bourgeois decadence too though. If members of whichever party find flamboyant, effeminate, or stereotypically queer displays of wealth to be better representations of upper class opulance than stereotypically straight excesses like the sports industry or expensive car enthusiasm, that is 100% on them.
This reads like you think LGBTQIA+ people don’t have political movements or presence outside of a western context.
Not really sure what specifically you are characterising as "western" LGBT politics as opposed to "non-western".
the western gay and queer culture was easily clocked as bourgeois decadence.
:pigpoop:
I'm just spitballing here but I'd bet there's a link between highly militarized movements and patriarchal attitudes due to the material conditions of that kind of struggle. It's not predetermined, of course it can be overcome through self-criticism like what happened in Cuba. But if you're a highly disciplined military outfit I can see machismo being regarded as a value and heteronormativity being praised, even if you are fighting for equality on a theoretical level
It depends on where you go, like Cuba has been ahead on LGBTQ stuff for a while. My gut instinct is to say a lot of socialist countries have been highly pro-natal or were trying to build agriculture communities so went overboard on developing stable nuclear families based on patriarchal reproduction. A primary focus for socialist countries has been food independence, that was historically associated with structured farming apparatuses, and that was associated with structured patriarchal families, so that might have done it. LGBTQ people often don't adhere to patriarchal nuclear families.
Cuba has a lot of independent farmers and relies on other countries for food, so maybe that's part of why they're ahead on LGBTQ rights? It also doesn't help that LGBTQ folk have been considered diseased nearly everywhere in the world up until very recently. Like I'm nonbinary and 99% of westerners tell me to see a doctor unless they're a vocal leftist.
Does anyone know more about this to say if I'm on the right track? I might be nuts.
Western Maoist parties? They're often political cults, like the MLPD or the RCP(USA)
Eastern Maoist parties? https://www.workers.org/world/2005/npa_0224/
Homophobia is false consciousness based on a secondary contradiction, with "socialist working within capitalism" being the primary contradiction.
if you are referring to developing world views of LGBT+ issues, mainly because global south left prioritize on capturing as much people as possible with more ''pressing'' matter (not saying it's a good thing)
Because Westoids are gonna West. :brainworms: go deep in a colonizer.
