back at it with another ridiculous question. As I have been developing my personal ideology, I’ve found that I reject much of the socially progressive ideas in corpo media and twitter (conservatives call it identity politics). Stuff like abolishing the nuclear family (or pride flag on drones joke) that doesn’t look to change any economic or material reality I find I don’t agree with.
First and second wave feminism I support as they changed the material realities for women, but the push for things like gender reassignment surgery under 16 years (i wanted to be in the cia when I was this age, people change personalities quickly during their teenage years) among other socially progressive ideas (bedtime abolition and the like) seem to be far removed from any type of class struggle and even hurt the working class.
Expressing this on Twitter got me called a nazbol (of course) but am I? Does being socially conservative but economically progressive make me a redfash? I understand intersectionality and that you can be trans and poor but focusing so heavily on non class issues seems detrimental for workers, even if they get some progressive tidbits.
plz feel free to own me if I’m spitting straight crap wrote this on my phone b4 work
edit: the thoughtful genzedong comments/commenters make this community the only place I’d be willing to ask a question like this, thanks for that, and the info you share so that myself and others can be better communists 💪🇨🇳👍
Most people advocating the abolition of the nuclear family aren’t trying to make families smaller. Most are trying to make them larger by recognizing extended family, lgbt couples in places where that’s still illegal or at risk of being made illegal, or groups of parents who share childcare duties. The nuclear family is extremely atomizing in its physical separation of human beings into small households of ~2-5 people that, in the west, also psychologically separates them from their communities. This was not typical in human history, where most humans lived with extended families or with the families of their spouse.
The more freeform nature of modern “found family” rhetoric in the left is a response to capital using nuclear families as an economic unit through which it can cheaply produce workers at the expense of the parents physical and mental health (+ what essentially amounts to VAST amounts of free labor, esp. from women). Anti-nuclear family types would prefer to communalize the raising of children in one form or another until it roughly resembles the ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ sort of mentality. Kibbutz-style stuff is a bit extreme, though, and I personally don’t advocate for that.
As far as third wave feminism and trans stuff goes: most everyone else here has already answered this well enough. But I’m trans and am able to answer questions on that and intersectionality.
I think what I’m against are the Kibbuts ideas, I would definitely be pro smaller village communities helping to raise children. Great explication of the “abolition of the nuclear family” into something constructive.
In “Stalin: The History and Critique of a Black Legend”, Domenico Lusordo goes into detail at one point regarding the destructive nature of the left-SRs and some radical feminists of the era who called for the dismantling of the nuclear family incl. the great revolutionaries Luxembourg and Kollontai, in opposition to the claims that Stalin, Lenin et al attempted to reify the man-woman-two-and-a-half-children archetype. Lusordo makes a compelling argument for the idea that well-meaning anarchists and leftcoms can often unintentionally propagate horrible violence in their calls to radically alter society, such as using the state to forcibly rip children away from their already established families and establish Kibbutz style communalized parenting without a protracted cultural revolution first.
There are constructive ways to dismantle oppressive and socially atomizing systems such as the nuclear family, as the comrade above pointed out, such as said protracted cultural and ideological revolution teaching people over many years about the benefits of a more communal-style parenting, and the eventual withering away of the nuclear family. I apologize if this is rambly, but I bring it up because I don’t think you’re a Nazbol, I think you’re just having an understandable reaction to the Malthusian / destructive tendencies that can be seen from sort of extreme sections of the left, and perhaps kneejerking a little bit the other direction, but it’s an understandable reaction like I said. Hope this makes any sense.
edit: you can see this destructive misanthropy elsewhere in the so-called “culture war”, such as pro-choice people attempting to make abortion seem cool and fun and conflating the procedure with birth control, rather than what it is, a very difficult choice for a would-be mother/parent to make and one that should be theirs alone. this can have negative repercussions like a lack of progressive focus on promoting easy-access contraceptives like condoms and medications, because abortion advocacy is taken to its extreme rather than logical endpoint. it comes from a well-intentioned place I think, but it is not constructive.
Bringing up Cuba as an example here, the National Center for Sex Education was established in 1989. It advocated for trans rights in the 90s/00s and succeeded in its namesake, by educating people on the importance of transitioning and SRS, and eventually getting state-funded HRT and SRS drafted to law in 2005 and passed in 2008. They more recently helped draft the new family code in 2019 (to legalize gay marriage and recognize alternative family structures), which will be voted on this September.
If this passes, a gay transperson would have a significantly higher quality of life in Cuba than in the most liberal states.
@halfie@lemmygrad.ml
Absolutely this! While the west regresses, Cuba continues to march steadily onward on this front. I’ve read that things are progressing in China, too – albeit perhaps slower – especially in the classroom, teaching kids about LGBT issues from a young age and teaching them ideas of tolerance etc.
China’s polling on the topic, on the individual level, is odd because it doesn’t really line up with western lib/con politics. Most Chinese people polled are fairly chill with transgender people and homosexuality as a concept, but when the questions get down to proximity, they’re not even comfortable with queer people being their neighbors, let alone their own kids.
From the docs I’ve seen, there is a tendency for transpeople in China to transition a bit later after they live on their own, and their parents tend to just kinda…change their minds about the proximity thing when faced with the new reality they don’t have the power to change. It’s particularly easier for transmen to gain acceptance relatively quickly (esp if they have a job). I think at some point they’re going to have a reckoning like in western countries where enough people suddenly know of enough out queer people to have to reconsider their position.
Nah not too rambly and we all do it here. I do support the community parenting mentioned above and have some experience with a form of it myself.
Yall really make me sit down and think everytime I post it’s great