babyhueypnewton posted:

one of the worst aspects of intersectionality is that not all oppression is the same. of course exploitation of labor is the essence of capitalism but the exploitation of female bodies is also fundamental to the capitalist mode of production as it is embedded in the reproduction cost of labor. racism, while not as fundamental, is so essential to primitive accumulation and the way capitalism has evolved in dividing the working class and sustaining imperialism it is unlikely capitalist could exist without racism. on the other hand, it is easily conceivable that capitalism could exist without discrimination against gender and sexual minorities, disabled people, the elderly and children, otherkin, fursecution, etc.in fact it's probably a defect in capitalism that it doesn't already exist this way.

of course good radical minorities argue that persecution of sexual difference is part of enforcing patriarchy which is true. but this is an ideological aspect of patriarchy and doesn't really touch upon its essence in women's reproductive labor. no amount of queer theory can erase that basic fact. trans people are some of the most radical people and tactical alliances are essential for communists but communists must always be in command whether it's with the KMT or Bash Back!

imo discrimination against disabled people makes more sense when you think about the generation of surplus value. If I own a coal-mine then why would I hire a man with no legs? Doesn't seem like the best investment. Why would I hire a person with schizophrenia or w/e who might be unreliable? These kinds of ruthless economic decisions make less sense as medical technology improves and capitalist production in the centers moves away from physically exhausting manual labor.

Just my 2c. Also there's probably a lot to say about capitalism producing (or at least exacerbating) certain forms of 'disability' (mental illnesses like depression).

Edited by Chthonic_Goat_666 (May 18, 2016 09:57:22)

dipshit420 posted:

(why do dogs stare at you when they defecate? It's not just because they're mimicking my posting, but it's also due to a sense of wanting to be sure you aren't taking advantage of the moment to visit violence upon them or steal from them, which can happen in a pack environment.)

This is probably, totally incorrect,.. maybe all the dogs you've ever had stared at you while pooping because they know they can get lots of eye contact from you.. A dog might stare at people while pooping because they were heavily rewarded for pooping as puppies. This is to the extent that the phenomenon you're witnessing is even real which I'm not sure it is. The "pack environment", especially as it's popularly understood, is fairly irrelevant to modern dog behavior. Sorry for your loss.

dipshit420 posted:

I think many people at least in America have an unhealthy fixation on bathrooms. Ultimately, gendered bathrooms are simply a courtesy segregation and ultimately probably have to do more with society's hang-ups towards menstruation which historically have clung to any Abrahamic tradition. *ANECDOTE* I've been in situations where everyone had to use the same facilities, and simply an extra layer of vigilance can be used to ensure no one gets violated. The issue tends to be the assumption that lack of opportunity is the only thing missing for these would-be predators to otherwise descend on the helpless and innocent in the porcelain temple. I think there is also a primal component to the sense of vulnerability which is tied directly to the act of elimination and has been noted in several species outside of humanity (why do dogs stare at you when they defecate? It's not just because they're mimicking my posting, but it's also due to a sense of wanting to be sure you aren't taking advantage of the moment to visit violence upon them or steal from them, which can happen in a pack environment.) Take an example outside of mammals and look at vultures who have no qualms about pissing and shitting themselves (again, very reminiscent of my posting content and style) as they do not maintain a similar pack or social style of association within their own species.

Basically, as a species with predatory components and a predisposition to opportunism, obsession, and advantage-taking, simple precautions need to be taken in any social situation. However, I believe the zero-tolerance approach to bathroom genders is not the right course of action. Each situation should be evaluated on an individual basis by the individuals involved in the situation, as the myriad of motivations and actors in any situation can vary so wildly.

patriarchy is not innate to biological life, it is not even innate to the human species. it is the result of class society, reshaped by that society's means of accumulation. capitalism abolishes segregation of the sexes, enveloping more and more of humanity into a hellish cycle of exploitation. gays, transsexuals, women, minorities, all are welcome to sell their labor on the free market and if they compete with each other for the lowest wages possible all the better.

not only are bathrooms one of the only places left in which pre-capitalist morality allows women to have spaces of autonomy and collective identity against the atomizated identity of capitalism, bathrooms are one of the last places in which workers as a whole can escape the production line and define the tempo of their own lives with the shielding of 'common sense' decency (a vestige of pre-capitalist passive revolution) and bourgeois fear of the abject. the attack on women's spaces and the attack on sites of collective identity are not the victory of left-aligned identity politics against neoliberalism but the its radical wing fulfilling neoliberal logic in spaces that decent bourgeois liberals would never touch.

trans people are part of this attack in the sense that they are actors on the stage of capitalism (what Marx calls the Darstellung: mise-en-scene) and are playing their part in neoliberalism. our goal as socialist feminists is to awaken their self awareness (what Brecht calls Verfremdungseffekt: the distancing effect) of the role they play in neo-liberalism. they can then either participate with the audience in gestus: objectifying themselves as didactic performers in order to embody a collective praxis or they can disguise the illusion of the theater and pretend appearance is essence. using the existence of the emergence of the trans subject in history as an occasion to show the collapsing social order of capitalism under neoliberalism and the increasing inability of ideology to maintain stable categories of gender, sexuality, and family is a revolutionary act. disguising its emergence as a biological fact, forcing women to acknowledge their own oppression as their essential being, and opening new markets for identity commodities is fully reactionary.

dipshit420 posted:

I'll simply refer you to this article which is the behavior I'm referencing.
http://iheartdogs.com/ask-a-vet-why-does-my-dog-stare-at-me-when-he-poops/
Mainly, that animals (mammals specifically) tend to attribute more vulnerability to the act of elimination than in other aspects of life. We don't ascribe a gender binary to the act of eating food, but surround it in ritual and practice.

Dr Kathryn Primm is a veterinarian - not an animal behaviorist. Primm does not provide any citation of studies she or others have done that prove that this is the reason your dog looks at you while shitting. With the discrediting of "pack theory" as a useful tool for understanding modern dog behavior, my explanations are just as plausible as Dr Primm's and I think I have at least a similar level of exposure to watching dogs shit. Your move may vary.

babyhueypnewton posted:

dipshit420 posted:

I think many people at least in America have an unhealthy fixation on bathrooms. Ultimately, gendered bathrooms are simply a courtesy segregation and ultimately probably have to do more with society's hang-ups towards menstruation which historically have clung to any Abrahamic tradition. *ANECDOTE* I've been in situations where everyone had to use the same facilities, and simply an extra layer of vigilance can be used to ensure no one gets violated. The issue tends to be the assumption that lack of opportunity is the only thing missing for these would-be predators to otherwise descend on the helpless and innocent in the porcelain temple. I think there is also a primal component to the sense of vulnerability which is tied directly to the act of elimination and has been noted in several species outside of humanity (why do dogs stare at you when they defecate? It's not just because they're mimicking my posting, but it's also due to a sense of wanting to be sure you aren't taking advantage of the moment to visit violence upon them or steal from them, which can happen in a pack environment.) Take an example outside of mammals and look at vultures who have no qualms about pissing and shitting themselves (again, very reminiscent of my posting content and style) as they do not maintain a similar pack or social style of association within their own species.

Basically, as a species with predatory components and a predisposition to opportunism, obsession, and advantage-taking, simple precautions need to be taken in any social situation. However, I believe the zero-tolerance approach to bathroom genders is not the right course of action. Each situation should be evaluated on an individual basis by the individuals involved in the situation, as the myriad of motivations and actors in any situation can vary so wildly.

patriarchy is not innate to biological life, it is not even innate to the human species. it is the result of class society, reshaped by that society's means of accumulation. capitalism abolishes segregation of the sexes, enveloping more and more of humanity into a hellish cycle of exploitation. gays, transsexuals, women, minorities, all are welcome to sell their labor on the free market and if they compete with each other for the lowest wages possible all the better.

not only are bathrooms one of the only places left in which pre-capitalist morality allows women to have spaces of autonomy and collective identity against the atomizated identity of capitalism, bathrooms are one of the last places in which workers as a whole can escape the production line and define the tempo of their own lives with the shielding of 'common sense' decency (a vestige of pre-capitalist passive revolution) and bourgeois fear of the abject. the attack on women's spaces and the attack on sites of collective identity are not the victory of left-aligned identity politics against neoliberalism but the its radical wing fulfilling neoliberal logic in spaces that decent bourgeois liberals would never touch.

trans people are part of this attack in the sense that they are actors on the stage of capitalism (what Marx calls the Darstellung: mise-en-scene) and are playing their part in neoliberalism. our goal as socialist feminists is to awaken their self awareness (what Brecht calls Verfremdungseffekt: the distancing effect) of the role they play in neo-liberalism. they can then either participate with the audience in gestus: objectifying themselves as didactic performers in order to embody a collective praxis or they can disguise the illusion of the theater and pretend appearance is essence. using the existence of the emergence of the trans subject in history as an occasion to show the collapsing social order of capitalism under neoliberalism and the increasing inability of ideology to maintain stable categories of gender, sexuality, and family is a revolutionary act. disguising its emergence as a biological fact, forcing women to acknowledge their own oppression as their essential being, and opening new markets for identity commodities is fully reactionary.

actually it's not that big of a deal dude

c_man posted:

babyhueypnewton posted:

pretend appearance is essence

this is rich coming from someone who said that racism in the US was over because black people voted for hillary

i'm pretty sure he never said that, and you're once again interpreting something in the worst faith possible.

drwhat posted:

Makeshift_Swahili posted:

Just my 2c. Also there's probably a lot to say about capitalism producing (or at least exacerbating) certain forms of 'disability' (mental illnesses like depression).

illness is a commodity now, it generates gdp (by requiring service) and it's endlessly renewable. just like prisoners and terrorists. the more anxious we are the more we spend to try to feel better even if just for a moment, the more we clamour for more or better work so we can have more money to spend on it. hmm. what could go wrong

it's a dialectic tho (I hate saying this but it's true). the diagnosis for mental illness also brings legal things into the mix amongst other things. and people are hard up for any resources they can get when dealing with those problems. I know what you mean, "illness is a commodity", but we need to see every angle and much as the terms like X industrial complex are fashionable it's not simply about money

overfire posted:

https://www.rt.com/uk/247953-transgender-children-rise-nhs/

"Britain’s only center specializing in gender issues saw the number of under-11s seeking consultation rise from 19 in 2009/10, to 77 in 2014/15.

The Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust said the referrals included 47 children aged under five and two under three years of age."

bc gender is now completely confused with sex, playing with trucks and not liking sparkly pink things is seen as a sign of gender dysphoria. most kids exhibiting gender non-conforming behaviour grow up to be gay, it's a minority that go on to be trans, so this functions as another arm of compulsory sexuality and medicalising away gayness

thank you for articulating this. i find the rush to medicate very young children disturbing regardless of context and it usually has a lot more to do with the parents than any potential outcome for the child. in this case, the parent's hangups around gender, sex and sexuality, but of course it happens far too often with psychiatric drugs as well. there might be a place for any of these kinds of medications in treating minors but there surely cannot be anything but risk of lifelong damage if administered to under 5s.

overfire posted:

idgaf if someone wants to dress or name themselves whatever they want but i do care about sex segregated bathrooms and locker rooms and places of safety for women, because rape and child predators still exist, inequality between the sexes still exist, and i don't think "because i said so" is a valid reason to believe someone when they say they're a lesbian if they have a cock and balls

dublin's only gay bar made the toilets gender neutral and surprise! someone got raped. it wasn't by a trans person, it was by a common or garden man, but "binary smashing" and identifying however you want has nothing to do with actual reality, which people live in, and struggle under, and women are disproportionately sexually assaulted under.

I agree that "gender neutral" bathrooms are a problem for the exact reason that men have a propensity for rape. I don't think, however, that acceptance of trans women using women's bathrooms is opening up some kind of rape loophole. The idea of a cishet man dragging up as part of a rape plot is grotesquely cartoonish, doubly so if the intended target is supposed to be a child. And not to put too fine a point on it, but it's this sort of reasoning that has now led to the nightmare scenario of actual cis lesbians in certain parts of amercia being forcibly removed from women's bathrooms by male cops unsatisfied by protestations that they are dealing with "real women". All I'm saying is, here be dragons (or at least, dragonkin)

c_man posted:

babyhueypnewton posted:

my argument was in a different context but what I am thinking now is that black labor aristocracy exists in the original definition of the term: a small elite of the proletariat who are bribed by imperialism, brought into the state machinery, and tasked with making working class demands moderate. the new definition of entire nations bribed to the point in which they no longer can be considered working class clearly doesn't apply to black americans. but what Malcolm X called the "black bourgeoisie" is perhaps better thought of as a labor aristocracy since its wealth primarily comes from ties to the administration of black politics rather than business investment or truly elite institutions.

what was significant for me was that rather than the black labor aristocracy falling away during times of crisis it has become increasingly strengthened in the era of Obama and Clinton. black 'misleadership' has become fully institutionalized to the point in which I don't think it is feasible to organize around the idea of race as simply another expression of class. for me this isn't some fundamental economic change but rather a question of tactics and an admission of the real damage 8 years of Obama did (and 8 years of Clinton will do) to the tradition of black radical politics in America.

that while black people make up higher and higher proportions of the imprisoned population, cut out from the standard US economy making sweatshop wages for their labor or less, getting displaced from their homes by the ascendant white upper middle class, being shot down by police, and having public services in majority black communities sabotaged to the point of poisoning the populations, you can theorize that black radical politics has no role to play in emancipation in the US and organization against capital Because Obama is exactly a confusion of appearance for essence

what are 'black' radical politics in this context? calls for world afrikan anti-imperialism? calls for black community self control of the police and economic institutions? calls for third party mobilization to shatter the control of the democrats over black people? do any of these sound possible to you in the era of Barack 'bombs africans' Obama? what you say is true but it has been true for over 40 years, I'd like people to soberly assess the present instead of wishing for the next Attica and BPP