Dirt_Possum [any, undecided]

To imply that abortion is the cure for poverty or that not having access to it is the cause is indeed false and a typical liberal refusal to look at the broader systems. But to deny how much unwanted pregnancy, along with the health risks and increased mortality rate that come with it, the burden on poor communities to provide adequate care for children when they are already overworked, etc, all contribute to and worsen poverty is absurd, and just as much a failure to recognize material reality.

Liberals and even well meaning progressives will sometimes fall into the trap of pitching abortion and birth control as a part of the solution to poverty.

But access to abortion and BC does help alleviate poverty. When women are unable to choose to not have unwanted pregnancies and children, it does create a serious strain on them and their community, exacerbating poverty and everything associated with it. That isn’t some idealist liberal delusion, it’s very well documented reality.

Edit, adding:

I honestly think if birth control was only available for colored people then conservatives wouldn’t have a problem with it. Abortion too

It’s just the opposite. One of the main reasons reactionaries tend to be so anti-abortion is because forcing women to have unwanted children helps to perpetuate poverty, locking communities into a cycle of impoverishment they can’t escape. Meanwhile, those who are rich and white have access to abortions whether they’re illegal or not, which is by design. If a rich old gammon-chud’s daughter gets pregnant and she doesn’t want to keep it, he’s likely to help her quietly get an abortion even as he ensures people of color never have that kind of opportunity. Wealthy white people want (and generally have) the freedom to do whatever they want while they simultaneously limiting the freedoms of poor BIPOC people, all to maintain or strengthen the white supremacist system.

There are links to alternative front ends in a comment below. Also, old.reddit is working OK for me without needing to login. You’re right, NSFW old.reddit is requiring login now.

There might be a few outside of here that know it, but they write essays about how George actually must have meant it to be the other way around to reassure themselves.

China has recently made positive strides on a number of issues like LGBTQ rights, so there’s no reason not to hope they can also start moving in the correct direction when it comes to phasing out animal cruelty and meat consumption as well, as they continue to economically surpass the reactionary west. Their dedication to addressing climate change will also at some point demand the recognition that using animals as a major source of food is unsustainable.

Wait, what’s worse? For who? I’m not totally sure what you’re saying here but as someone who has survived by doing sex work, who has been repeatedly sexually exploited*, and who has also been more than what I think most would just call exploited, I would not say that any of that was worse for me than being murdered on a factory farm. Can we just agree that exploitation and the objectification or commodification of sentient life is very bad and needs to be abolished?

*(Side note to make clear that sex work is not inherently exploitational either but that’s a different ball of wax.)

Part of what’s funny about the video is that he was trying to showcase a software update Tesla released, the purpose of which was specifically for making it safe to close the trunk on your fingers. He tests it with a cucumber and banana and it actually looks reasonably safe but then he does the test with his finger. Not only does the test fail but the trunk won’t open so he’s stuck there shocked in obvious pain and can’t get his finger back out.

It doesn’t actually break but he shows it afterward and it’s clearly smashed with bruises and a decent sized cut from the trunk’s edge. He comes back and has some excuse from tesla about it being because he tested with veggies first and the software thought he was trying to shut it with something blocking it because of the previous repeated attempts. He actually starts to test it again with his finger saying “This time it should hurt way less…” but he can’t do it, he keeps pulling back right before it closes in what I might have said was finally a tiny bit of sense, only it’s an instinctive reaction and he can’t help it. He concludes that we’ll just have to trust it from the last banana test.

Here it is if anyone wants to watch: www.youtube.com/watch?v=rA55B1kobnw

Cool story

I love when hexbear users just make shit up about what I say.

I love when hexbear users demonstrate not only a complete unwillingness to do bare minimum self crit, but deflect around the reason they’re being criticized and then pretend the people criticizing them are “making shit up.” “I’m getting ratioed because hexbears are making shit up about what I say!” is the kind of comment I expect to read from .world lemmitors, but its especially disappointing to read it from a leftist I would have thought should know better.

I said “you should just block me if you don’t want to see it”

Do you think blocking a user lets people unsee something they already saw? Does blocking on hexbear allow for time travel now?

Intentional bad faith misreading of what I said as well as an unwillingness to even try to comprehend what I did say. Also, you don’t get to decide for other people what is traumatic for them. The self centered lib-brained gall of some people to think they’re the arbiters of other people’s trauma… Just wild.

Because they’re literally given the power to not see it if they don’t want to

Can you really not see why this is just a bad argument? Not to mention selfish? The exact same thing could be said about literally anything that we require content warnings for. Talking about SA? “Bro, just block me if you don’t wanna see detailed depictions of assault!” Traumatic gore (which is actually what “meat” really is)? “Come on bro, it takes no effort just to block me when I post gore images, so I shouldn’t have to figure out how to use spoiler tags late at night for your delicate snowflake sensibilities.” Even then it’s retroactive, people are not given the power to not see it if we don’t want to the first time around. Blocking you comes after we’ve already been forced to see something we didn’t want to see and only works in hypothetical future occurrences.

I’m not saying it was massive. If that was what it read I was implying, maybe my language was a little hyperbolic. But I actually am aware of the downvotes and am including that information in talking about this.

17 up and 10 down on my first and very mild comment. 22 up and 11 down for his long, swerfy response. The support is in his favor. This is really splitting hairs though, and the exact numbers don’t really matter. Just that there are quite a lot, even a slight majority of people supporting SWERF garbage. I also think that moderation says a lot about a community, what it really stands for. To me, it’s telling that I got banned for rule 2 (bigotry, sexism, etc.), which is what I was calling out, while the actual bigotry and sexism still stands with a bunch of upvotes, does speak to the general vibe of what is ok and what isn’t.

Also, the user who felt ashamed and was calmly defending herself just commented here in the megathread further down, saying that she’s getting downvoted.

Nothing to apologize for, and whoever is downvoting you can go fuck themselves.

Yeah, the whole “protecting” sex workers like you is part of the whole patriarchal anti-feminist shit pie. Like you mentioned in one of your comments, it comes down to a sense of ownership over women and women’s bodies. Infantilizing “protection” of women is not the worker solidarity they pretend it is. It’s just couching misogyny in Marxist terms so they get to feel both superior and intellectual about their sexist brainworms.

You are not saying crazy stuff, and you are doing good work that really does help people. You should be proud of that. And you can be proud of it while still recognizing the dangers of such work in this world as it is, and the inevitable exploitation that happens with all work under capitalism but that sex work suffers in particularly acute ways. The problem, as usual, is with capitalism. Not sex work inherently. And definitely not you.

As for migrating to hexbear, just do what you feel comfortable with. You can engage with both communities regardless of which one you have an account with, and you can maintain accounts on both instances too if you want. There are going to be problematic people to some degree in both, but yeah, I have to admit I was pretty shocked how bad lemmygrad is with this issue, and apparently feminism in general. edit: I do think hexbear will have your back better with this kind of thing, and we don’t even have downvoting here, so I think over all it’s going to be a less antagonistic atmosphere. I would say make an account and after a bit see which instance you like as your home instance more.

Anyway, since it got removed over there, I’ll say it again here: Solidarity and compassion to you, comrade. You’re valid and awesome and don’t ever let SWERFs make you think otherwise.

edit. And thanks for having the courage to say what you did in the thread over there even with people downvoting you, and also thanks for your comment here, I appreciate it.

Ok, I see. Yeah that doesn’t surprise me after today. It’s too bad her post is gone.

You got banned from genzedong not lemmygrad,

You’re right. Fixed.

yeah that’s a problem with lemmygrad, they’re not really swerf as much as not read up on feminism

Disappointing. Not being read up on a topic is one thing, but when actively spouting misogynist SWERF rhetoric, I’d say that’s a deeper rot than simply not being read up. I know for a fact there are a number of lemmygraders who are not like that, and are very much feminists and support sex workers because I’ve talked to them in the past. But judging by that thread and the support there for the SWERF, it really does point to it being a real problem with the site culture.

Looking around a bit I see there have been long-time and well known trans hexbears that wanted to defederate from lemmygrad due to the transphobia too.

I don’t understand, they had a post talking about their position on sex work?

I just got banned from lemmygrad c/genzedong on lemmygrad for calling out blatant sexism where a user was shaming sexworkers (as said by someone else, a sexworker, who literally talked about the shame a SWERF lemmygrad user was making them feel). But a comment where I expressed solidarity with that person and told them they shouldn’t feel ashamed of the work they do was removed for “rule 2” which is… bigotry, sexism, etc. So rule 2 states you aren’t allowed to call out bigotry and sexism I guess? These losers call themselves leftists?!

I’m sickened to see sexism and sexphobic rhetoric getting more upvotes in a place I thought was supposed to be progressive and not a reactionary shithole where misogyny is allowed and encouraged and people who call it out get banned with their comments removed. Yeah, I’m mad. Fuck lemmygrad, at least the SWERFs and apparently the SWERF-supportive mods.

I guess I’ve been spoiled by hexbear usually being so good about these sort of issues, I forget that other leftist spaces are often still rife with sexist bigoted SWERF assholes. Lemmygrad and hexbear overlap so much these days (which 99% of the time is great) I wasn’t remembering that lemmygrad really does have its own distinct site culture, and at least one aspect of it is really… not good. I will not be shamed by SWERFs and I will not allow my comrades to be shamed by SWERFs when I can do anything to help it.

Sorry, just had to vent somewhere, but this wasn’t worth a whole post.

I think Gaia answered that question pretty well in the affirmative, as have countless communist sex workers before her, that yes, it absolutely can and does help people, including women. Anyone who says otherwise is discounting the voices of women and comrades. That doesn’t mean there aren’t terrible examples of exploitation in the sex industry and that it isn’t dominated by power imbalance. But so too are there terrible examples of exploitation and abuse in most other low wage work. From miners to service industry workers. Sex work is work, and it doesn’t deserve scorn or disdain any more than any other form of work. As communists, this should not be a difficult concept to grasp, but unfortunately patriarchal, reactionary brainworms still infect a not insubstantial subset in some leftist spaces.

Removed by mod

Not a bad post except for that you just had to throw in some sexist SWERF garbage in #7.