• KommandoGZD@lemmygrad.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    18
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    1 year ago

    The absolute effect of liberalism on women’s perception of themselves and their role in the world

    • WithoutFurtherDelay@lemmygrad.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      arrow-down
      8
      ·
      1 year ago

      This entire thread smacks of weirdly sexist brainworms to me

      I’m not even talking about this because I’m believe in that “feminism is only about individual choice!” bs, but because it’s weird to imply that wanting to be a prostitute instead of a medic or a cook is some kind of mental degradation, and all three of those things being assumed as the only roles a woman would play in a war is just gross

      • Valbrandur@lemmygrad.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        18
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        but because it’s weird to imply that wanting to be a prostitute instead of a medic or a cook is some kind of mental degradation

        …Is it? I do not think it is a stretch to say that the despersonalization of a human being into a sexual object is indeed pretty degrading.

        and all three of those things being assumed as the only roles a woman would play in a war is just gross

        Helping the wounded and the starved are the main tasks that volunteering organizations play in any warzone, be it either men or women. It is the kind of thing one volunteers for unless they are in the very small minority of people who are either dense enough or who have enough of a death wish to go there to fight and get blown up by an Iskander missile (RIP Reddit battalion).

        • WithoutFurtherDelay@lemmygrad.ml
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          8
          ·
          1 year ago

          …Is it? I do not think it is a stretch to say that the despersonalization of a human being into a sexual object is indeed pretty degrading.

          I mean, yeah, wanting to have sex is a pretty normal desire for a lot of people, so it’s not a surprise that some people would choose to do so professionally. There are definitely systemic issues at play that coerce people into becoming prostitutes, which makes the industry very bad altogether, but if removed from that context it’s pretty reasonable (and neither of the comments in the chain really seemed to have been complaining about the context)

          • Valbrandur@lemmygrad.ml
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            12
            arrow-down
            4
            ·
            1 year ago

            but if removed from that context it’s pretty reasonable

            Good grief. I am sorry, but that stances like this one come from the mouths of comrades is the reason why I always object when a communism study guide for beginners does not include texts from Alexandra Kollontai.

            Sex under coercion is rape. Work under the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie is done by proletarians under economic coercion as they have to work to be able to fulfill their basic needs. Therefore, sex as a means of living, or in other words, prostitution, is rape.

            You have four options at this point: you can either accept this fact and move on; you can deny that work under a bourgeois dictatorship functions by placing working class people under economic coercion, a point at which you should consider why call yourself a communist anymore; or you could either deny that sex under coercion is rape or, heavens forbid it, that rape is acceptable under any economic system, both actions that would get yourself immediately kicked from any minimally respectable communist party. The choice is yours.

            • WithoutFurtherDelay@lemmygrad.ml
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              arrow-down
              6
              ·
              edit-2
              1 year ago

              I mean… that’s why I said “removed from context”. All of this is context, context that was missing from previous comments (which read more like “how dare this woman not be traditional” to me). I agree that prostitution is coercive and wrong in every current implementation.

              • Valbrandur@lemmygrad.ml
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                8
                arrow-down
                1
                ·
                1 year ago

                context that was missing from previous comments (which read more like “how dare this woman not be traditional” to me)

                We are in a communist space. You have plenty context to work with: the last thing you have to expect of a critique of prostitution in a place like this is to be done from a point of view of religious puritanism and not from a perspective of principled marxist feminism, which is where @KommandoGZD 's comment and those following them came from.

                The bourgeois state promotes the idea that all critiques to the existence of prostitution itself comes from conservative or reactionary perspectives. You are not immune to propaganda: before attempting to write a critique basing on the gut feeling that you get from reading something, try to read what is it that it is actually being said.

                I agree that prostitution is coercive and wrong in every current implementation.

                Current or otherwise. Prostitution is not defensible under socialism or communism either, and to know why I once again redirect you to Kollontai. I was writing here the bullet points of the text, but I have decided not to as no summary can substitute the proper reading of an original theory text.

                As it says in the text, and as it was said in the first All-Russian Congress of Working Women: “A woman of the Soviet labour republic is a free citizen with equal rights, and cannot and must not be the object of buying and selling", and to this day we should still strive to build a proletarian society where this remains true.

                • WithoutFurtherDelay@lemmygrad.ml
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  arrow-down
                  5
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  We are in a communist space. You have plenty context to work with: the last thing you have to expect of a critique of prostitution in a place like this is to be done from a point of view of religious puritanism and not from a perspective of principled marxist feminism, which is where @KommandoGZD 's comment and those following them came from.

                  The bourgeois state promotes the idea that all critiques to the existence of prostitution itself comes from conservative or reactionary perspectives. You are not immune to propaganda: before attempting to write a critique basing on the gut feeling that you get from reading something, try to read what is it that it is actually being said.

                  “We are communists so we can’t reproduce brainworms on accident” is not a valid defense and you even point that out in this very same comment. I’m not immune to propaganda, but you aren’t, either.

                  You could at least acknowledge the wording was a little weird, or anything other than immediately jumping to accusing me of being a brainwashed stooge.

                  • JucheBot1988@lemmygrad.ml
                    link
                    fedilink
                    arrow-up
                    7
                    ·
                    edit-2
                    1 year ago

                    Public service announcement: this is c/genzedong. We take the principled Marxist-Leninist line on prostitution (i.e., that it is reactionary and exploitative). If you wish to defend prostitution, you may get in your time machine, go to r/genzedong circa late 2021, and once there join the reddit brigaders who, every single week and to the great annoyance of every principled Marxist-Leninist on the site, would try to start a “discussion” about it.

                    It is not idiocy to decide you want to support a military you like by fucking them.

                    A word of advice, however: don’t start with that.

                  • Valbrandur@lemmygrad.ml
                    link
                    fedilink
                    arrow-up
                    6
                    arrow-down
                    1
                    ·
                    edit-2
                    1 year ago

                    Are we immune to brainworms? No. Are there low chances that the three people that you have replied to were all suffering from such, when the only thing you had against them was the gut feeling devoid of analysis that you had because of “the wording being a little weird”?

                    I’m not immune to propaganda, but you aren’t, either.

                    I do not think I am exposed in my day-to-day life to a substantial amount of propaganda pushing for a marxist perspective of the exploitation of women and its abolition. Both of us are, however, exposed to a fairly large amount of propaganda that attempts to promote the prostitution (that you defend) as an act of liberation. These two are not the same.

                  • GarbageShootAlt@lemmygrad.ml
                    link
                    fedilink
                    arrow-up
                    3
                    ·
                    1 year ago

                    What about a male prostitute?

                    They are vastly, vastly less common and this is just a poor attempt at a counterpoint because conservatives also dislike male prostitutes, but the answer is that to the socialist male prostitution also represents a problem. It is a smaller problem in absolute terms, but on a “per capita” basis it is of similar severity.

                  • Valbrandur@lemmygrad.ml
                    link
                    fedilink
                    arrow-up
                    2
                    arrow-down
                    2
                    ·
                    edit-2
                    1 year ago

                    In response to the edited message: I have not downvoted you, nor have I done so in any message of yours other than the first one.

                    The belief is that this women is an idiot, or some sort of brainwashed fool for deciding to… well, they’re not even selling their body for sex in this case, they’re just having a lot of sex “for free” as far as I can tell.

                    I can assure you, this woman didn’t go from Texas to Kiev and got her own apartment plus a covering of its maintenance and of her own life needs with money that appeared out of thin air, with savings or by somehow landing a job as an accountant in warn-torn Ukraine: she is with no doubt charging soldiers for sex.

                    This woman saw a humanitarian crisis developing and her first choice to help was offering sexual services to soldiers in exchange of money. Yes, that someone develops this way of thinking is absolutely brainwashing done by liberalism.

          • GarbageShootAlt@lemmygrad.ml
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            4
            ·
            1 year ago

            “If we just remove the context of the largest human trafficking disaster Europe has seen in 30 years, it makes sense to want to be a prostitute in Ukraine!” Ukraine is literally the worst place on the continent to be doing that right now, not that it’s really the best place to do anything other than die.

      • GarbageShootAlt@lemmygrad.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        You generally have a point but

        and all three of those things being assumed as the only roles a woman would play in a war is just gross

        ??? Cooking and first aid are normal things for volunteers to do, male or female, it’s not that she’s a woman, but women seem to mostly have the good sense to not fly halfway around the world to get blown up as soldiers like some functionally-suicidal men did, even though there are certainly women on both sides of the war in combat roles.

        There are some other normal volunteer roles, e.g. sanitation is very important, but you’d surely say the same thing if people were commenting on her not pursuing that (“oh! so women should be cleaners?”). Anything beyond that, like being a mechanic or nurse or something, requires a serious level of training