Awoo [she/her]

Hexbear existed 2 years before everything else? Fucking wild. This loser’s account is literally 3 years younger than my hexbear account and 2.5 years younger than my Lemmy.ml one and he thinks we’re the late ones?

The only “ruining” I’m doing here is ruining his bullshit fuckoff attempt to associate lgbt and gender with being a corporate thing, it’s fucking nonsensical. Dude deserves to lose teeth.

Eat my ass loser.

If you think I would read this shit after that first sentence you’re a fucking idiot

This is an absolutely garbage take. “Anonymous” defaults to male in everyone’s mind because patriarchy is the basis of our society. Claiming everyone should just be “Anonymous” is a male supremacist and exclusionary of everything else position to take.

I veered off because it seems like a bigger issue, I was gonna come back around. It’s a conversation it’s how conversation usually tends to work when it’s just two people talking to one another rather than reddit culture debate bro shit or the soapboxing people do where they talk past someone to the audience instead of to the person they’re actually responding to.

Are people born inherently feminine or masculine or not ? It being 3d doesn’t seem to matter here but rather that feminine and masculine being a component of gender at all forces me to ask the question. Either the answer is yes which is all kinds of fucked up, or the answer is no and we’ve found a component of gender that you agree is socially created.

This chart concerns me. Are you saying that “being masculine” and “being feminine” are biological? Not just gender? Can you define “being masculine” and “being feminine” without being gender-essentialist?

I’m veering off a bit, because we weren’t talking about masculinity or femininity at all a moment ago, but these are 100% socially created things and to argue about them from a biological perspective requires being a gender-essentialist.

If not, I would err away from “masculine” and “feminine” as descriptors of gender itself.

I keep saying I do and you keep saying I don’t.

I don’t know what part of this youis being misunderstood so I’m trying to simplify and make clear.

1. People with NO gender are not the same as people who are genderfluid or non-binary or binary.

2. If your position is that gender is biologically intrinsic, you are absolutely excluding people with the absence of gender.

3. If you still believe those people are trans, but do not believe their interpretation is correct, then you do not believe their stated lack of gender.

These are roughly the things I’m trying to get across here. This is where the contradiction I am raising lies.

Yes. You did. When you reworded your “I believe all trans people” to “believe all trans people are trans” you did that explicitly because you were highlighting believing them on the trans part but not on the rest.

If you don’t believe that they are not genderfluid, or that they are genderless (because you believe that gender is biologically intrinsic), then you do not believe their stated gender.

You believe they’re trans but don’t believe their stated gender? So you want? Secretly misgender them inside your head?

I’m being intentionally uncharitable here because I don’t think you’ve examined this and really think you should. I do not think you’re a bad person, just that you haven’t yet examined these contradictions.

What I’m telling you is that you’re stating things that are incompatible views.

You can’t “believe all trans people” while explicitly saying that you disagree with trans people who say they have no gender, or trans people that say they are not gender fluid and very much feel like they can and have changed gender at a later point in life.

These are not compatible things. One of these things MUST be untrue.

You want to by hyper-inclusive and nice to all people, I get that you don’t want to exclude people which is why you are saying “I believe all trans people” (because you’re not a bad person). But at the same time you are stating a position that is not open to a certain position, largely for good reasons, you are defensive about how it could be used to harm us and have a naturally protective reaction that wants to reject the very idea of it because of the danger it also opens us up to. This has explicitly been the only reason you’ve presented for opposing it “this could be used to argue in favour of conversion therapy” - purely a position taken from a trans activism perspective. What I am trying to get at is that you shouldn’t approach this from the trans activism position but rather than from a philosophical perspective analysing gender.

Doing a “I don’t wanna talk to you anymore” doesn’t make any of the things I’ve pointed out here any less true. You can’t hold incompatible positions simultaneously. They need to be more deeply examined.

You can’t “believe all trans people” while also not believing the trans people who say their experience is not gender fluidity but an actual mid-life change in gender.

Ultimately you can only be one or the other.

As for those people without dysphoria, several of them will openly say they think they can choose one or the other, but prefer one, but don’t think this is the same as gender fluidity. Are they wrong?

“I believe all trans people” while having a biological gender essentialist belief is not possible.

I am seriously interested in gender abolitionist takes that aren’t just abolishing the strict roles/styles/behaviors affiliated with gender. I don’t think you can provide this

This is the basis for literally all cyberpunk and transhumanist takes on gender as the elimination of biological limitations turns the entire of sexuality into something of an avatar swap. If you’ve spent any time in VR, where some insight into behaviours of people and culture has played out, you start to get a sense for where this could go. What gender is that person with the smoke avatar? No gender. Which, for the record here, is a gender that a lot of people say they already are, which does not at all fit into the gender biological essentialism. You NEED to exclude people who say they have no gender at all (not non-binary, those with explicitly no gender) in order to fit this concept together.

Frankly, I’m kind of growing tired of discussing trans issues with cis people

I am not cis. Not sure why you’ve decided this, fucking disgusting response and the reason I waited days to bother responding to this tbh. The way this part of your response makes me feel is unlikely to ever go away when I see you elsewhere on this site, wtf were you thinking.

I believe all trans people.

I want to say, once again, that this is a platitude. It does not fit into the view that you’re taking. You genuinely can’t believe all trans people while having this view.

This reasoning errs much too close to bio-essentialism for me, it’s the same line of thinking that leads people to “you have to have dysphoria or you’re not trans”.

I think this lacks an open mind. This reaction isn’t that surprising though, I do get why you and other people are very invested in this. I think you’re too wedded to gender overall though, I find the camp of trans people writing about the idea that eventually society will enter a post-gender phase to be the most compelling theory. If gender can be abolished then it can also change.

2million people were victims of american murderers. The americans like to forget that their foreign policy and behaviour of their military is basically identical to the IDF.

“Cure” is loaded language. Your gender doesn’t need curing, your gender is what it is.

If it can be changed, then yes perhaps it can be intentionally changed. But what the mechanisms are for that to occur are absolutely not understood and any attempt to forcibly do so to anyone should be considered a violation of human rights.

I don’t disagree with the reasoning everyone has for being extremely defensive about this possibility, I just also don’t really rule it out as solidly as many others do. I get it though. I do understand why people have such a reaction to this and want it to be untrue. I feel like we don’t really understand any of it though. We’ve barely scratched the surface.

I also think a lot of the research is trying to confirm the idea that people are born this way. IE working from the conclusion. Because the science is performed by those with a desire for it to be the outcome because it’s the safest outcome for trans people. I’m not really convinced all of it is good.

I don’t know. I’ve just seen a lot of change in myself in my life and am open to the idea that we’re not as fixed as we believe. And of course that that’s OKAY and doesn’t change anything about how people should be treated or viewed.

If they say they were made trans by life circumstances, I would tell them that that is likely not true, but I would never dictate someone’s gender.

I think it’s worthwhile remaining open to this but not really valuable to trans people to like make it part of activism or anything. There are enough instances of people saying things like their sexuality has completely shifted for me to be open to the idea that what gender we’re attracted to can change. I don’t think we know enough about being trans to be certain one way or another, trans people however have a very understandable defensive reaction to this because we don’t want it to be weaponised against us as “fake” or whatever.

The positions are elected by a vote at the supreme soviet assembly, those positions are elected by the soviets (councils) below the assembly, and those are elected by the soviets below that, and so on down to the lowest level where the local constituents vote.

In the party it’s generally considered a “duty” though, especially among those that participated in the revolution like Stalin who treated loyalty to the organisation, self-sacrifice and subordination to it as a significant and necessary part of what made the revolution succeed. Thousands of people literally sacrificing their whole lives for the goal.

As such, Stalin wouldn’t break a decision of the assembly just as he wouldn’t want anyone else to. If they said they still needed him in his post he did his duty and stayed despite not wanting to.

He largely held equal powers to everyone else on the Council of Ministers, the position of Chairman didn’t have special powers. The General Secretary role of the party was invented by Lenin with the intention of it being used to break opposition in the party (perform purges). Once Stalin had successfully performed his purges and prevented split in the country/civil-war he saw the position as having completed its purpose and wanted rid of it, he didn’t like the cult of personality around himself and wanted people to view the government in a collective capacity rather than an individual leader kind of way. That’s obviously not what ended up being the perception though. Lots of hero worship got in the way.

Voices: Correct! Vote!

Rykov: There is a proposal to vote.

Voices: Yes, yes!

Rykov: We are voting. Who is for comrade Stalin’s proposal to abolish the post of General Secretary? Who is opposed? Who abstains? Noone.

October 16, 1952 (http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1954-2/succession-to-stalin/succession-to-stalin-texts/stalin-on-enlarging-the-central-committee/):

This article was taken from the Russian newspaper Glasnost devoted to the 120th Anniversary of Stalin’s birth, was the last speech at the CC [Central Committee] CPSU [Communist Party of the Soviet Union] before Stalin died. The text was being published for the very first time in the Soviet Union…

…MOLOTOV – [Glasnost -] coming to the speaker’s tribune completely admits his mistakes before the CC, but he stated that he is and will always be a faithful disciple of Stalin.

STALIN – (interrupting Molotov) This is nonsense. I have no students at all. We are all students of the great Lenin.

[Glasnost -] Stalin suggested that they continue the agenda point by point and elect comrades into different committees of state.

With no Politburo, there is now elected a Presidium of the CC CPSU in the enlarged CC and in the Secretariat of the CC CPSU altogether 36 members.

In the new list of those elected are all members of the old Politbiuro – except that of comrade A. A. Andreev who, as everyone knows now is unfortunately completely deaf and thus can not function.

VOICE FROM THE FLOOR – We need to elect comrade Stalin as the General Secretary of the CC CPSU and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR.

STALIN – No! I am asking that you relieve me of the two posts!

MALENKOV – coming to the tribune: Comrades! We should all unanimously ask comrade Stalin, our leader and our teacher, to be again the General Secretary of the CC CPSU.

Same attempt (A. I. Mgeladze, Stalin. Kakim ia ego znal. Strannitsy nedavnogo poshlogo. p. 118):

At the first Plenum of the CC [Central Committee] of the CPSU [Communist Party of the Soviet Union] called after the XIX Congress of the Party (I had been elected member of the CC and took part in the work of this Plenum), Stalin really did present the question of General Secretary of the CC CPSU, or of the post of Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. He referred to his age, overwork, said that other cadres had cropped up and there were people to replace him, for example, N.I. Bulganin could be appointed as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, but the CC members did not grant his request, all insisted that comrade Stalin remain at both positions.

His sentence isn’t wrong. Stalin did try to resign multiple times (four actually). When his fourth resignation was rejected by the party he then attempted to abolish his own position entirely.

Here are some of the documented ones:

May 1924, 23-31 (Marxist Internet Archive, “The Trotskyist Opposition Before and Now”) ( https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1927/10/23.htm#1)

It is said that in that “will” [Lenin’s Testament - ZB] Comrade Lenin suggested to the congress that in view of Stalin’s “rudeness” it should consider the question of putting another comrade in Stalin’s place as General Secretary. That is quite true. Yes, comrades, I am rude to those who grossly and perfidiously wreck and split the Party. I have never concealed this and do not conceal it now. Perhaps some mildness is needed in the treatment of splitters, but I am a bad hand at that. At the very first meeting of the plenum of the Central Committee after the Thirteenth Congress [Undefined date of this attempt, however, within the Thirteenth Congress and thus anywhere within the 23rd to the 31st - ZB] I asked the plenum of the Central Committee to release me from my duties as General Secretary. The congress itself discussed this question. It was discussed by each delegation separately, and all the delegations unanimously, including Trotsky, Kamenev and Zinoviev, obliged Stalin to remain at his post.

What could I do? Desert my post? That is not in my nature; I have never deserted any post, and I have no right to do so, for that would be desertion. As I have already said before, I am not a free agent, and when the Party imposes an obligation upon me, I must obey.

A year later I again put in a request to the plenum to release me, but I was again obliged to remain at my post.

What else could I do?

August 19, 1924 (Grover Furr, Khrushchev Lied, p. 244):

To the Plenum of the CC [Central Committee] RCP [Russian Communist Party]

One and a half years of working in the Politburo with comrades Zinoviev and Kamanev after the retirement and then the death of Lenin have made perfectly clear to me the impossibility of honest, sincere political work with these comrades within the framework of one small collective. In view of which, I request to be considered as having resigned from the Pol[itcal] Buro of the CC.

I request a medical leave for about two months.

At the expiration of this period I request to be sent to Turukhansk region or to the Iakutsk oblast’, or to somewhere abroad in any kind of work that will attract little attention.

I would ask the Plenum to decide all these questions in my absence and without explanations from my side, because I consider it harmful for our work to give explanations aside from those remarks that I have already made in the first paragraph of this letter.

I would ask comrade Kuibyshev to distribute copies of this letter to the members of the CC.

With com[munist] greet[ings], J. Stalin.

December 27, 1926 (Grover Furr, Khrushchev Lied, p. 244):

To the Plenum of the CC [Central Committee] (to comrade Rykov). I ask that I be relieved of the post of GenSec [General Secretary] of the CC. I declare that I can work no longer in this position, I do not have the strength to work any more in this position. J. Stalin.

December 19, 1927 (Grover Furr, Khrushchev Lied, p. 245) (https://livrozilla.com/doc/796199/pelo-socialismo):

Stalin: Comrades! For three years [Suggesting there could be more resignation attempts unbeknownst to me - ZB] I have been asking the CC [Central Committee] to free me from the obligations of General Secretary of the CC. Each time the Plenum has refused me. I admit that until recently conditions did not exist such that the Party had need of me in this post as a person more or less severe, one who acted as a certain kind of antidote to the dangers posed by the Opposition. I admit that this necessity existed, despite comrade Lenin’s well-known letter [Lenin’s Testament - ZB], to keep me at the post of General Secretary. But these conditions exist no longer. They have vanished, since the Opposition is now smashed. It seems that the Opposition has never before suffered such a defeat since they have not only been smashed, but have been expelled from the Party. It follows that now no bases exist any longer that could be considered correct when the Plenum refused to honor my request and free me of the duties of General Secretary. Meanwhile you have comrade Lenin’s directive which we are obliged to consider and which, in my opinion, it is necessary to put into effect. I admit that the Party was compelled to disregard this directive until recently, compelled by well-known conditions of inter-Party development. But I repeat that these conditions have now vanished and it is time, in my view, to take comrade Lenin’s directive to the leadership. Therefore I request the Plenum to free me of the post of General Secretary of the Central Committee. I assure you, comrades, that the Party can only gain from doing this.

Dogadov: Vote without discussion.

Vorshilov: I propose we reject the announcement we just heard.

Rykov: We will vote without discsussion…We vote now on Stalin’s proposal that he be freed from the General Secretaryship. Who is for this proposal? Who is against? Who abstains? One.

The proposal of comrade Stalin is rejected with one abstention.

Stalin: Then I introduce another proposal. Perhaps the CC [Central Committee] will consider it expedient to abolish the position of General Secretary. In our Party’s history there have been times when no such post existed.

Voroshilov: We had Lenin with us then.

Stalin: We had no post of General Secretary before the 10th Congress.

Voice: Until the 11th Congress.

Stalin: Yes, it seems that until the 11th Congress we did not have this position. That was before Lenin stopped working. If Lenin concluded that it was necessary to put forward the question of founding the position of General Secretary, then I assume he was prompted by the special circumstances that appeared with us before the 10th Congress, when a more or less strong, well-organized Opposition within the Party was founded. But now we proceed to the abolition of this position. Many people associate a conception of some kind of special rights of the General Secretary with this position. I must say from my experience, and comrades will confirm this, that there ought not to be any special rights distinguishing the General Secretary from the rights of other members of the Secretariat.

Voice: And the duties?

Stalin: And there are no more duties than other members of the Secretariat have. I see it this way; There’s the Politburo, the highest organ of the CC; there’s the Secretariat, the executive organ consisting of five persons, and all these five members of the Secretariat are equal. That’s the way the work has been carried out in practice, and the General Secretary has not had any special rights or obligations. The result, therefore, is that the position of General Secretary, in the sense of special rights, has never existed with us in practice, there has been only a collegium called the Secretariat of the CC. I do not know why we need to keep this dead position any longer. I don’t even mention the fact that this position, called General Secretary, has occasioned in some places a series of distortions. At the same time that at the top no special rights or duties are associated with the position of General Secretary, in some places there have been some distortions, and in all the oblasts there is now a struggle over that position among comrades who call themselves secretaries, for example, in the national CCs. Quite a few General Secretaries have developed, and with them in the localities special rights have been associated. Why is this necessary?

Shmidt: We can dismiss them in the localities.

Stalin: I think the Party would benefit if we did away with the post of General Secretary, and that would give me the chance to be free from this post. This would be all the easier to do since according to the Party’s constitution there is no post of General Secretary.

Rykov: I propose not to give comrade Stalin the possibility of being free from this position. As concerns the General Secretaries in the oblast and local organs, that should be changed, but without changing the situation in the CC. The position of General Secretary was created by the proposal of Vladimir Il’ich. In all the time since, during Vladimir Il’ich’s life and since, this position has justified itself politically and completely in both the organizational and political sense. In the creation of this organ and in naming comrade Stalin to the post of General Secretary the whole Opposition also took part, all those whom we have now expelled from the Party. That is how completely without doubt it was for everyone in the Party (whether the position of General Secretary was needed and who should be the General Secretary). By which has been exhausted, in my opinion, both the question of the “testament” (for that point has been decided) and exhausted by the Opposition at the same time just as it has been decided by us as well. The whole Party knows this. What has changed now after the 15th Congress and why is it necessary to set aside the position of General Secretary.

Stalin: The Opposition has been smashed.

(A long discussion followed, after which:)

[continued in reply]

The USSR was a dictatorship

No it wasn’t. This is propaganda. Even the CIA admits that it is propaganda in this document:

https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80-00810A006000360009-0.pdf

Democracy under socialism is simply structured differently. You need to study it properly.

Several countries that you support today still use a system very much like this. Cuba and Vietnam for example. A solid video on Cuban democracy is here: https://youtu.be/2aMsi-A56ds

All the socialist countries built on this system.