Queer Assimilation

[Zoop]

As a self-identified queer (the specifics aren't important) do you think that we should assimilate ourselves into heteronormative society, by demanding equal rights (gay marriage, freedom into military etc.) ?
Do you think that the queer movement has become less radical and do you think this is an issue?

Personally, I fucking hate assimilationism; Assimilationism is advocated by liberals and anarcho-liberals. I think, at best, it is a way for us to submit to our enemies and conform to their ideology, whilst undergoing self-sacrifice. I think the Bash Back! movement had it right.

[BIXX]

Bash Back isn't as homogenous as you imply it is. I love the work you just read (or are reading), which does give us the more radical/nihilist version of bash back (what I would consider myself closer to, theoretically, than any other part).

I agree about assimilation, however I am also against using queer to create new identity as that is part of the assimilation process.

I'd recommend reading the baedan journals as well (1 and 2) are known the anarchist library). If I were to criticize bash back I'd say it comes (at least for the most part) dangerously close to activism, if not breaching that barrier.

Idk my thoughts aren't collected right now.

[The Feral Underclass]

This is [one of] the Baedan journal BIXX is referring to http://guelphpeak.org/review/2013/11/baedan-journal-of-queer-nihilism/

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

As a self-identified queer (the specifics aren't important) do you think that we should assimilate ourselves into heteronormative society, by demanding equal rights (gay marriage, freedom into military etc.) ?
Do you think that the queer movement has become less radical and do you think this is an issue?

Personally, I fucking hate assimilationism; Assimilationism is advocated by liberals and anarcho-liberals. I think, at best, it is a way for us to submit to our enemies and conform to their ideology, whilst undergoing self-sacrifice. I think the Bash Back! movement had it right.

That's cool but people would prefer to have their basic human rights afforded to them now; not some fictional Tomorrowland. Civil union isn't "conforming to heteronormative culture," considering within contemporary society it's a legal process of affording couples the same benefits afforded to heterosexuals and is a matter of practicality. It alleviates unneeded inefficiencies regarding inheritance, medical care, managing of finances and general assets, etc. It's not just a matter of the wedding and emotions attached. The system as it was, was often manipulated by homophobic family members to their own horrid ends. That's why homosexual or gay marriage was so important. I mean, as we know, the institution of marriage historically was a business transaction despite implied emotional connection and crap.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

As a self-identified queer (the specifics aren't important) do you think that we should assimilate ourselves into heteronormative society, by demanding equal rights (gay marriage, freedom into military etc.)?
The proper question is how do we get to a place where marriage, military conscription, etc., are no longer issues for anyone. Our liberation as queers is tied to the success of a broader liberation struggle for all. Indeed, queer liberation is impossible within the bourgeois system. If all we do is ghettoize ourselves from heteronormative society, we're doing nothing to actually liberate ourselves or anyone else.

[The Feral Underclass]

That's cool but people would prefer to have their basic human rights afforded to them now; not some fictional Tomorrowland. Civil union isn't "conforming to heteronormative culture," considering within contemporary society it's a legal process of affording couples the same benefits afforded to heterosexuals and is a matter of practicality. It alleviates unneeded inefficiencies regarding inheritance, medical care, managing of finances and general assets, etc. It's not just a matter of the wedding and emotions attached. The system as it was, was often manipulated by homophobic family members to their own horrid ends. That's why homosexual or gay marriage was so important. I mean, as we know, the institution of marriage historically was a business transaction despite implied emotional connection and crap.

Your conclusion is that civil unions aren't heteronormative because they give people legal rights? How does that make sense? If we consider within contemporary society these legal processes, we are accepting the premise that these things exist in a heteronormative society, since contemporary society is heteronormative. Civil unions don't exist separately from heteronormative social relations. I mean, monogamy is a heteronormative concept. The very idea that only two people can live in these legal rights within union or marriage comes specifically from heteronormative concepts of partnership and monogamy. Asking for marriage equality was to say to heteronormative society that we want to be like you. Giving marriage equality not literally subsumed gay culture into heterosexual social and cultural norms. For example, there are now movements of gay people with a "abstinence before marriage" agenda...

Your argument also fails to understand the nature of "rights," which have always been pacifiers to dissent against established order. People are afforded rights at the point which the foundations of prevailing norms are being shaken to such a level that subsuming that dissent is the only remaining option to maintain those prevailing norms. By providing "rights" it de-escalates conflict. Every movement for radical change has been co-opted or assimilated into capital, the state and heteronormativity, and then celebrated as victory. Now this is a problem when your objective is conflict.

[KillGreed444]

I am straight, so i guess technically i am part of the hetero-normative society, but i do not agree with the society of which i live. I am a person of equal universal rights based on sheer morality, and nothing more or less. I do think that assimilation is a form of social abnegation and conformity, so in order to create a society of universal tolerance, we must remove the society currently in place, JFK said that a select few generations in world history have had the task of defending freedom in its maximum hour of danger, but to correct his quote a bit, we are no longer only defending freedom, we are having to create new freedoms that our bourgeois is denying, out of a primal fear of the unknowns of a future society predicated on altruism and tolerance....but the ones who aren't afraid, the younger generations like myself, must be the "anti-assimilators" if you will.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

Your conclusion is that civil unions aren't heteronormative because they give people legal rights? How does that make sense? If we consider within contemporary society these legal processes, we are accepting the premise that these things exist in a heteronormative society, since contemporary society is heteronormative. Civil unions don't exist separately from heteronormative social relations. I mean, monogamy is a heteronormative concept. The very idea that only two people can live in these legal rights within union or marriage comes specifically from heteronormative concepts of partnership and monogamy. Asking for marriage equality was to say to heteronormative society that we want to be like you. Giving marriage equality not literally subsumed gay culture into heterosexual social and cultural norms. For example, there are now movements of gay people with a "abstinence before marriage" agenda...

Your argument also fails to understand the nature of "rights," which have always been pacifiers to dissent against established order. People are afforded rights at the point which the foundations of prevailing norms are being shaken to such a level that subsuming that dissent is the only remaining option to maintain those prevailing norms. By providing "rights" it de-escalates conflict. Every movement for radical change has been co-opted or assimilated into capital, the state and heteronormativity, and then celebrated as victory. Now this is a problem when your objective is conflict.

I really don't think 'monogamy' is a heteronormative concept considering for a long ass time all over the world polygamy was just how things were. What is the alternative here? No gay marriage? I get wha you're saying but I guess I just for get the hypothetical practical application. As for the rights thing I've thought about this but I'm not so sure since objectively you're creating precedence and the material conditions/infrastructure for future progress/radical change. No one can appeal child labor laws or base wage minimums, those are now established parameters. Everything gets coopted and assimilated into capital, I think it may be inherent and inevitable; in some way or fashion.

[The Feral Underclass]

I really don't think 'monogamy' is a heteronormative concept considering for a long ass time all over the world polygamy was just how things were.

And in all of those situations same-sex relationships were part of that cultural process. Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome -- even in Northern tribes, same-sex relationships were practiced. In fact, "gayness" was never actually a thing. It was part of a polysexual dynamics. People did what they want and engaged in what they wanted. Sure, there were regulations that governed these things, but it was only until the advent of Christianity and Western culture that homosexuality was seen as an "other" and monogamy between a man and a woman became an exclusive cultural norm at the expense of everything else. Of course it's a heteronormative concept. Monogamy was specifically engineered to ensure heterosexualities legal, cultural, political and social power and legacy.


What is the alternative here? No gay marriage? I get wha you're saying but I guess I just for get the hypothetical practical application. As for the rights thing I've thought about this but I'm not so sure since objectively you're creating precedence and the material conditions/infrastructure for future progress/radical change. No one can appeal child labor laws or base wage minimums, those are now established parameters. Everything gets coopted and assimilated into capital, I think it may be inherent and inevitable; in some way or fashion.

The state will repeal whatever rights it wants if it means the perpetuation of capital. Child labour laws are only "parameters" in Western countries because white people don't want their little kids working in sweat shops. They don't mind kids in the economic East and South working in sweat shops though. The same goes for the minimum wages. If those things ever impeded the existence of capital you better believe they would repeal them.

In the long term, the alternative is the destruction of bourgeois society and everything that's in it, including heteronormativity and its institutions. In the immediacy, the alternative is a militant, anti-capitalist queer movement that is escalating conflict. If you want to live your day-to-day life under capitalism, then sure have rights, have a job, settled down, get married, adopt some kids. I'm happy for you. But if you want to overthrow bourgeois society, then you need to cut the shit and get on with the fight. There's no half measure to defeating capitalism. Either you want to live comfortably and "equal" in capitalism and compare wedding photos with your straight buddies, or you want its destruction. You can't have both.

[BIXX]

The proper question is how do we get to a place where marriage, military conscription, etc., are no longer issues for anyone. Our liberation as queers is tied to the success of a broader liberation struggle for all. Indeed, queer liberation is impossible within the bourgeois system. If all we do is ghettoize ourselves from heteronormative society, we're doing nothing to actually liberate ourselves or anyone else.

Attacking assimilation doesn't make us unable to attack capitalism and such, attacking capitalism and assimilation are the same thing.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

Attacking assimilation doesn't make us unable to attack capitalism and such
Nor did I say it did.

[The Feral Underclass]

Nor did I say it did.

You didn't say it explicitly, but you are relying on the same strawman argument that you always use in these discussions, which implies that any objection to gay rights in a bourgeois context is useless because you can't have queer liberation in a bourgeois context. You then imply that objecting to gay rights also means ghettoising ourselves.

It's quite an ingenious piece of rhetoric if you look at it. Not only do you totally reinterpret the position of objectors to gay rights, you actually invent a false conclusion that leads from that reinterpretation, which reinforces your original strawman construction. Sneaky.

I'm not sure if this is a conscious thing, or whether it's just your inability to understand the nuances of the queer lib argument. The destruction of heteronormative society requires the destruction of bourgeois social relations which itself requires the destruction of capitalism. Destroying capitalism, however, does not mean that bourgeois social relations and heteronormative society is suddenly going to disappear. You require a specific movement within the class to push for those things. The issue is that while your working to destroy capitalism, you're also continuing to reinforce heteronormative institutions (such as marriage) as "gay rights", which makes it impossible to challenge heteronormativity even when capitalism is destroyed. At some point you are going to have to make an effective challenge against heteronormativity. How can you support marriage (even though you don't) and then when capitalism is destroyed, be like "oh yeah, we oppose marriage after all." How does that make sense? Waiting for capitalism to be destroyed doesn't seem like a very competent tactical choice.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

You then imply that objecting to gay rights also means ghettoising ourselves.
The actual implication was we're ghettoizing ourselves if we can't connect it to a broader struggle. But feel free to consistently and deliberately misinterpret anything I post so that it gives you a reason to attack me.


How can you support marriage (even though you don't) and then when capitalism is destroyed, be like "oh yeah, we oppose marriage after all."
That's like asking how someone who's married can possibly be a revolutionary anti-capitalist, isn't it?

[BIXX]

That's like asking how someone who's married can possibly be a revolutionary anti-capitalist, isn't it?

How can they?

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

How can they?
Really?

[BIXX]

Really?

Yes.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

Yes.
So your argument is no married person can be part of the communist struggle?

[BIXX]

So your argument is no married person can be part of the communist struggle?

They can be a useless part of it I guess. But I refuse to organize with anything that is married.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

They can be a useless part of it I guess. But I refuse to organize with anything that is married.
Then you're fucking useless yourself. Capitalism will be abolished through mass struggle. Marital status is irrelevant to building a mass struggle. You're a good example of what I meant about ghettoizing ourselves.

[KillGreed444]

Yea that person was dumb. It will require mass struggle to defeat Capitalism, thats why being intolerant as to who we accept to join us is completely contradictory to the cause, that very intolerance is part of the problem we are trying to eradicate, acceptance of anyone that believes in the movement is vital.

[Bala Perdida]

Then you're fucking useless yourself. Capitalism will be abolished through mass struggle. Marital status is irrelevant to building a mass struggle. You're a good example of what I meant about ghettoizing ourselves.

Instead of getting rid of institutions which embody stuff like the family, you're just ignoring them. That sounds like a great way to start an overthrow.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

Instead of getting rid of institutions which embody stuff like the family, you're just ignoring them. That sounds like a great way to start an overthrow.
No, I'm a Marxist and I understand that marriage will exist until the material conditions for it are abolished. In the meantime, dividing the struggle against capitalism based on whether one is married or not is stupid.

Seriously, people are dying because of capitalism, and ultralefts think married people shouldn't play a role in the struggle against it? That's how you want to limit the anti-capitalist struggle?

[Bala Perdida]

No, I'm a Marxist and I understand that marriage will exist until the material conditions for it are abolished. In the meantime, dividing the struggle against capitalism based on whether one is married or not is stupid.

Seriously, people are dying because of capitalism, and ultralefts think married people shouldn't play a role in the struggle against it? That's how you want to limit the anti-capitalist struggle?

I could see married people trying to do something, but I don't see them effectively doing anything. If someone is conforming to the point of marriage they're probably much less likely to do anything beyond shout in the street.

[BIXX]

No, I'm a Marxist and I understand that marriage will exist until the material conditions for it are abolished. In the meantime, dividing the struggle against capitalism based on whether one is married or not is stupid.

Seriously, people are dying because of capitalism, and ultralefts think married people shouldn't play a role in the struggle against it? That's how you want to limit the anti-capitalist struggle?

Sorry the anti-capitalist struggle holds no hope anyway, sorry if I don't want to be around people who hipsterize "the struggle" by conforming to a part of capitalist society while at the same time claiming to hate it.

[BIXX]

Then you're fucking useless yourself.

Oh dear Lord no how ever will I cope with this

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

I could see married people trying to do something, but I don't see them effectively doing anything. If someone is conforming to the point of marriage they're probably much less likely to do anything beyond shout in the street.
Marx? Lenin? Are you seriously arguing marriage held them back from their revolutionary activities?

[N. Senada]

What is really rooted in-depth in bourgeois ideology is the belief in something called "the human nature".
Of course nothing like "the human nature" really exsist even if schools, university, books, pubblications and more are filled with this superstition.
"Assimilation" is wrong not only for lgbtq but for any minority, any revolutionary.
Nonetheless we should not confuse "assimilation" and transitional claims.

As for the individual perspective that "no married people is usefull to the revolution", from this point of view no one is usefull to the revolution, 'cause everyone is in some way contaminated by capitalism and dominant ideology.

Freeing themselves from dominant ideology is a day-by-day endless struggle which can only end with the deafeat of the capitalism.

But you cannot defeat capitalism all alone, you need the mass struggle of millions and millions of workers all around the world, and most of them are surely married.

Revolutions are never "pure".
If you wait billions workers to become perfect 100% revolutionaries, you'll wait in eternity.

[Red Baker]

Choosing not to get married or conform to a socially defined 'Queer' lifestyle is no more radical than any other lifestyle choice, be it vegetarianism, veganism, or anything else. Lifestylism is a dead end solution that has gotten us, and will get us, nowhere. We would be better served accepting any and all persons into the struggle regardless of whether or not they decide to assimilate, so long as they are motivated by the primacy of the class struggle and willing to commit themselves to it.

[The Feral Underclass]

The actual implication was we're ghettoizing ourselves if we can't connect it to a broader struggle. But feel free to consistently and deliberately misinterpret anything I post so that it gives you a reason to attack me.

Well that was kind of what I said. But again this is a non-starter. No one is suggesting we oppose marriage in isolation of any sort of anti-capitalist analysis. Also, I have no interest in attacking you. I have nothing personal against you (I don't know you), I'm simply criticising your views.


That's like asking how someone who's married can possibly be a revolutionary anti-capitalist, isn't it?

If you want to frame it like that then sure. Why not ask that? What is wrong with asking it? Revolutionary anti-capitalists do and think all manner of shit that should be challenged.

[Bala Perdida]

Marx? Lenin? Are you seriously arguing marriage held them back from their revolutionary activities?

If that's the case then I'm glad they were married. One wrote books and the other overthrow a regime and replaced it with another terrible regime. They achieved so much.

[BIXX]

If that's the case then I'm glad they were married. One wrote books and the other overthrow a regime and replaced it with another terrible regime. They achieved so much.

To take that one step further both Marx and Lenin wanted a continued civilized existence, which would make any liberation impossible, queer or otherwise.

[Lord Testicles]

To take that one step further both Marx and Lenin wanted a continued civilized existence, which would make any liberation impossible, queer or otherwise.

Oh yeah, and liberation would definitely happen in an uncivilised existence. All we need to do is make life harder, who need's heating in the winter and antibiotics, fuck, who needs food everyday!? Not me I'll tell you, I'm a "back to basics" kind of guy. Eating raw rabbit in the woods because all the logs are too wet to start a fire before shitting it into a hole and wiping my ass with nettles, ah perfection! All before I'm laid low by food poisoning and some desperate fucker clubs me over the head for whatever little food I have left because it's been a hard winter. As I die, desperately gurgling my last breaths through my broken face, I'll think "I'm glad my life was short and brutish." :rolleyes:

Good luck convincing people to fight and die for that! :laugh:

[John Nada]

If that's the case then I'm glad they were married. One wrote books and the other overthrow a regime and replaced it with another terrible regime. They achieved so much.Yes, breaking down the contradictions in capitalism and inspiring revolutions and insurrections around the world, and waging an insurrection that took down one of the world's most repressive regimes, crushing its proto-fascist supporters and establishing a state that was by far the freest for women and LGBTQ was a major accomplishment. I can only imagine what they'd do if they never got married, like Engels.

[Brandon's Impotent Rage]

One of the things that really pisses me off is some of the younger, more posh individuals in the LGBT community who make a point at poo-pooing all of those in the Leather and Drag communities. "Why can't they just act like normal people ?", they ask.

Hey, bourgie assholes! Those leather daddies and drag queens you make fun of were the people who threw the first bricks at Stonewall. They were the vanguard of the Gay Liberation movement. Maybe show a little respect. Or, you know, say nothing because IT'S NONE OF YOUR GODDAMN BUSINESS!

[The Feral Underclass]

Choosing not to get married or conform to a socially defined 'Queer' lifestyle is no more radical than any other lifestyle choice, be it vegetarianism, veganism, or anything else.

I don't really understand this view. Making a decision to break from social convention is actually quite radical when you consider how powerful the superstructure is. I see plenty of friend falling into the trap of marriage and children because they are socially pressured. The choice to fight against those pressures is a pretty radical one.


Lifestylism is a dead end solution that has gotten us, and will get us, nowhere. We would be better served accepting any and all persons into the struggle regardless of whether or not they decide to assimilate, so long as they are motivated by the primacy of the class struggle and willing to commit themselves to it.

The problem with these discussions is that most people can only operate their intellectual engagement in binary. Nobody has suggested that people should be "unaccepted" into whatever "struggle" you are referring to.

Your view is also dangerous because it fails to understand and address in practical terms the issue of bourgeois ideological hegemony. Altering the base isn't going to suddenly remove the superstructure's influence. It will allow us to build a new superstructure, but it isn't going to suddenly make bourgeois ideology evaporate into thin air; it will still prevail. How do you intend to build a 'communist superstructure' if you are not challenging the culture, institutions, social relationships and prevailing norms of bourgeois society?

So yes, making the choice to start now is a radical choice insofar as it is a departure from how we interpret, understand, respond and behave towards the ideological hegemony of the society we want to destroy. It is also fundamentally necessary to producing communism.

[Bala Perdida]

Yes, breaking down the contradictions in capitalism and inspiring revolutions and insurrections around the world, and waging an insurrection that took down one of the world's most repressive regimes, crushing its proto-fascist supporters and establishing a state that was by far the freest for women and LGBTQ was a major accomplishment. I can only imagine what they'd do if they never got married, like Engels.

People were already being made aware of how bad capitalism is. Marx wasn't the only one to find that out. Also all that stuff about a free state was pointless considering they were in a state of war so no one could really be free at all. On top of that everyone was starving, and when the war ended life became terrible for women and queer people again on paper. Sure women could vote and be managers in the USSR, but that's not what we're fighting for. Which goes back to the point that arguing for gay rights isn't arguing for queer liberation.

[Bala Perdida]

Oh yeah, and liberation would definitely happen in an uncivilised existence. All we need to do is make life harder, who need's heating in the winter and antibiotics, fuck, who needs food everyday!? Not me I'll tell you, I'm a "back to basics" kind of guy. Eating raw rabbit in the woods because all the logs are too wet to start a fire before shitting it into a hole and wiping my ass with nettles, ah perfection! All before I'm laid low by food poisoning and some desperate fucker clubs me over the head for whatever little food I have left because it's been a hard winter. As I die, desperately gurgling my last breaths through my broken face, I'll think "I'm glad my life was short and brutish." :rolleyes:

Good luck convincing people to fight and die for that! :laugh:

Who the hell keeps telling you that's what post civilization is? If you like all that industry shit then feel free to mine all those metals and minerals yourself. As well as maintaining all that death inducing machinery which needs nothing more than a corner of your sleeve to start pulling you in and grinding you to death. I guess it's all worth it though to have paved streets. Good luck convincing people to keep dealing with that after you've got them all subversive.

[Lord Testicles]

Who the hell keeps telling you that's what post civilization is? If you like all that industry shit then feel free to mine all those metals and minerals yourself. As well as maintaining all that death inducing machinery which needs nothing more than a corner of your sleeve to start pulling you in and grinding you to death. I guess it's all worth it though to have paved streets. Good luck convincing people to keep dealing with that after you've got them all subversive.

Yeah, who needs heavy industry and metals? It's not like steel or machinery have made anything better.

I want everyone working in the fields just to be able to feed themselves. More work for everyone I say! Mechanised agriculture is for the lazy!

[Bala Perdida]

More work for everyone I say!

That pretty much sums up your position.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

but it was only until the advent of Christianity and Western culture that homosexuality was seen as an "other" and monogamy between a man and a woman became an exclusive cultural norm at the expense of everything else.

I'm not sure that is factually correct entirely, but it is interesting the variation in China historically, where there were periods where liberal attitude towards homosexual relationships intermittent with periods of strengthening of "man and a woman" relationships and marriages. Probably there's some social dynamic behind that rising and falling conservatism (need for growing population or whatever).

[N. Senada]

Individual gain of consciousness of some problematic issue, like the marriage or something else is pretty important, 'cause allows the subjective self to start to break up with some dominant ideology or strong dominant ideas.
But it's something fully inadequate if taken alone.
The individual gain of consciousness will not transform the reality, even if you multiply the individuals whom step forward in revolutionary consciousness in thousands.

One of the biggest error that we can make as revolutionary is believing in the revolutionary statute of the good example.

[BIXX]

skinz is just ignoring the actual position of anti-civ folks so probably should stop pretending to contribute to this thread.

[Lord Testicles]

Would anyone object if I split the anti-civ talk?


That pretty much sums up your position.

I don't see how that is. Unless you're suggesting that we abandon things like mechanised agriculture, modern medicine, masonry, plumbing, etc. etc. then you're still going to need tools, buildings, running water, all the infrastructure and so on, all of which is easer and less laborious to do with industry. What's the alternative? Artisans?


skinz is just ignoring the actual position of anti-civ folks so probably should stop pretending to contribute to this thread.

I'm actually derailing the thread but since you brought it up I couldn't resist. What is the anti-civ position? If it's not what I've replied to here then what is it exactly?

[The Feral Underclass]

Civilisation isn't just a list of "things" that make our lives convenient. I think that's a really reductive way to view civilisation.

[Lord Testicles]

Civilisation isn't just a list of "things" that make our lives convenient. I think that's a really reductive way to view civilisation.

I'm not saying it is, it's bigger than the things I've listed, but those things are products of civilisation and I don't see how they could be achieved without it.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Who the hell keeps telling you that's what post civilization is? If you like all that industry shit then feel free to mine all those metals and minerals yourself.

Or, as another user said, if you're sick, make the medicine yourself. I'm not interested in having another iteration of the interminable "that's not what anti/post/trans/para-civ is" debate; whatever you want to call it, this is the stated position of certain users on this forum. Opposition to associated labour entirely. What this has to do with communism, which means socialised associated labour, is anyone's guess. It's also anyone's guess what this has to do with the primitive classless society. Certainly no one in the primitive society wanted to abolish fire because it could burn your sleeve.

Funny, that.

To say that a gay lifestyle (not any old gay lifestyle, of course, but only those approved by academic theorists) is revolutionary is to completely muddle the cause and the effect. Oppression of homosexuals is an effect of class society, not its cause. All this waffling about superstructure is warmed-over Maoist theory from the seventies, trying to explain why the socialist paradises of the USSR and China were so shit to women, gay people etc. And like all Maoism the adherents adopt an ultra-radical posture to attack perceived enemies and heretics from among the people whose cause they allegedly uphold, so they can more easily end up in bed with conservative forces.

[Antiochus]

Anti-civilization is, as a certain user put it, the conscience of Capitalism, nothing more. Their irreducible position is that a child born with polio/measles should die from it, because yes, its natural and that's the way it is. Malthusian at its core.

As to Queer assimilation. Its a tricky subject. LGBT should off course "integrate" into society because they are, off course, humans with every bit as much to lose/gain as such. I just don't see how identity politics by itself could achieve anything. I agree that seeing gays "conform" to an institution like marriage might make one cringe, but that should be up to the individual person.

[John Nada]

People were already being made aware of how bad capitalism is. Marx wasn't the only one to find that out. Also all that stuff about a free state was pointless considering they were in a state of war so no one could really be free at all. On top of that everyone was starving, and when the war ended life became terrible for women and queer people again on paper. Sure women could vote and be managers in the USSR, but that's not what we're fighting for. Which goes back to the point that arguing for gay rights isn't arguing for queer liberation.No shit people were aware how bad capitalism is. Marx could've never been born and it'd be painfully obvious to anyone. Someone else probably would've done what he did later. He was just one of the first to actually give this system of suffering a name with meaning.

And it didn't just affect the USSR. There was a whole worldwide movement sparked by the October Revolution. When women were dying in back ally and imprisoned for contraceptives in the US, the USSR was the first to legalize abortion, usually with expenses paid by the government. When LGBTQ people were being murdered with impunity if the state didn't get to them first, it was legalized in the USSR. Sadly much of this was later undone, but even later in the 60s Vietnam's War of Liberation sparked many progressive movements(including queer liberation) in the US.
To say that a gay lifestyle (not any old gay lifestyle, of course, but only those approved by academic theorists) is revolutionary is to completely muddle the cause and the effect. Oppression of homosexuals is an effect of class society, not its cause. All this waffling about superstructure is warmed-over Maoist theory from the seventies, trying to explain why the socialist paradises of the USSR and China were so shit to women, gay people etc. And like all Maoism the adherents adopt an ultra-radical posture to attack perceived enemies and heretics from among the people whose cause they allegedly uphold, so they can more easily end up in bed with conservative forces.Revolutions by definition effect the superstructure. There was the case, at least in the USSR and arguable in the PRC too, where there was a progressive superstructure without a bourgeoisie. It was by far more progressive than much of the bourgeois countries(though to be fair, the bar's pretty low). Yet this gave way to various reactionary laws such as criminalizing homosexuality and banning abortion. So there was a reaction within the superstructure before the base was significantly altered. Was this reaction within the superstructure merely a reflection of a base in transition, or was the base reflecting the superstructure.

[The Feral Underclass]

As to Queer assimilation. Its a tricky subject. LGBT should off course "integrate" into society because they are, off course, humans with every bit as much to lose/gain as such.

Whose society are we "integrating" into? And we have a lot more to lose and gain than straight people, actually.

[The Feral Underclass]

To say that a gay lifestyle (not any old gay lifestyle, of course, but only those approved by academic theorists) is revolutionary is to completely muddle the cause and the effect. Oppression of homosexuals is an effect of class society, not its cause.

What's a "gay lifestyle"? And who are these people who say this? Seriously, who are they? What do they mean when they say "gay lifestyle" and what do they mean when they say it's "revolutionary"?

[Invader Zim]

Instead of getting rid of institutions which embody stuff like the family, you're just ignoring them. That sounds like a great way to start an overthrow.

Jesus.

And this is why we fail. If people want a familial relationship what business is it of yours?

[The Feral Underclass]

I'm not saying it is, it's bigger than the things I've listed, but those things are products of civilisation and I don't see how they could be achieved without it.

Okay, so what is that "bigger"? Civilisation created those things but it did so in a framework and more importantly for a specific purpose. The things that you list didn't develop in neutrality. The agriculturalisation and industrialisation of human productive activity has had consequences. Sure, it's allowed us to produce and harvest [evil] wheat and other crops quickly and efficiently, but what are the other consequences of these processes? They have reinforced the stratification of human existence as well as to our alienation and exploitation. To pose that question is valid, even if you don't agree with its conclusion -- I certainly don't advocate "rewilding," but I think as a critique it offers a valid and necessary perspective.

[The Feral Underclass]

Jesus.

And this is why we fail. If people want a familial relationship what business is it of yours?

It's our business in the same way as any form of oppressive social relationship is.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Revolutions by definition effect the superstructure. There was the case, at least in the USSR and arguable in the PRC too, where there was a progressive superstructure without a bourgeoisie. It was by far more progressive than much of the bourgeois countries(though to be fair, the bar's pretty low). Yet this gave way to various reactionary laws such as criminalizing homosexuality and banning abortion. So there was a reaction within the superstructure before the base was significantly altered. Was this reaction within the superstructure merely a reflection of a base in transition, or was the base reflecting the superstructure.

If the base reflects superstructure, you have a complete inversion of Marxist historical materialism. In any case everyone apart from some Maoist and Hoxhist orgs can agree that the juridical superstructure of the USSR and China was problematic. The problem is that Maoists claim that the base economic relations in the USSR - before capitalism was restored, which just happens to be the point when Mao fell out with the CPSU - were that of socialism. So not only do you have the notion that socialism can slide back into capitalism, but that it can support any old superstructure. Thus socialism is divorced from the struggle against oppression, which leads to all sorts of pathologies.


What's a "gay lifestyle"? And who are these people who say this? Seriously, who are they? What do they mean when they say "gay lifestyle" and what do they mean when they say it's "revolutionary"?

I don't think I have to explain to you what a gay lifestyle entails. Mostly it entails fucking people of the same sex/gender. As for the people who claim that some of these lifestyles are revolutionary, well, in this very thread we have claims such as:


Attacking assimilation doesn't make us unable to attack capitalism and such, attacking capitalism and assimilation are the same thing.

So "attacking assimilation" (which, it is made clear in the subsequent discussion is a certain kind of lifestyle where for example marriage is prohibited) means attacking capitalism.

That's one of the clearest statements of lifestylism I've ever seen on this site.


And this is why we fail. If people want a familial relationship what business is it of yours?

Because the family, in addition to being the root cause of the oppression of women and homosexuals, is the way in which a class of dispossessed producers is reproduced in capitalist society. But the family will fall with capitalism, as it is a part of capitalism. To think that living outside a family is somehow revolutionary is inane.

[The Feral Underclass]

I don't think I have to explain to you what a gay lifestyle entails. Mostly it entails fucking people of the same sex/gender.

Fucking people of the same sex/gender isn't a lifestyle, it's an innate sexual preference. Being gay isn't like being vegan or a punk. There are cultures associated with being gay obviously, but that's not a lifestyle. The "gay lifestyle" is a marketing slogan designed to sell being gay to gay people. I mean, I understand the point you're getting at, but I think using a term like "gay lifestyle" is particularly dangerous and has lots of homophobic baggage associated with it.


As for the people who claim that some of these lifestyles are revolutionary, well, in this very thread we have claims such as:

So "attacking assimilation" (which, it is made clear in the subsequent discussion is a certain kind of lifestyle where for example marriage is prohibited) means attacking capitalism.

That's one of the clearest statements of lifestylism I've ever seen on this site.

Lifestylism is the belief that you can change society through altering the way you live your life. I don't see how accepting the premise that fighting assimilation of queer people is an anti-capitalist fight is a statement for lifestylism.

And in any case how is what BIXX said the same as saying "gay lifestyle" is revolutionary. Living in a world where marriage is prohibited (I don't think BIXX or anyone has ever said that) isn't a "gay lifestyle"...

[Ele'ill]

we should assimilate into other institutions too like the police and prisons and courts and adopt those lifestyles that go along with it and then get paid a bonus for allowing our images to be broadcast across the metropolis in a message saying 'hey see we're normal too don't burn us, we'll embrace your society in whole'









j/k

[Invader Zim]

It's our business in the same way as any form of oppressive social relationship is.

So, if two people decide to move in together, produce offspring together, raise those offspring together, provided it is consensual who precisely are they oppressing? Or is the idea of 'family' here the 1950s, nuclear family, complete with economically independent patriarch, economically dependent and purely domestic matriarch, and 2.4 children + dog? If so then, sure. But I rather think you have missed the last 60 years.

The fact is that if you want to tell other people how they should manage the dynamics of their relationships then I don't think you are going to get very far.


Because the family, in addition to being the root cause of the oppression of women and homosexuals, is the way in which a class of dispossessed producers is reproduced in capitalist society.

Familial relationships all long predate the modern oppression of both women and homosexuals. The problem is not 'family' per say, but rather how society has come to construct its understanding of how families should be operate and hierarchy within them.


But the family will fall with capitalism, as it is a part of capitalism.

Familial relationships also long pre-date capitalism.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Fucking people of the same sex/gender isn't a lifestyle, it's an innate sexual preference. Being gay isn't like being vegan or a punk. There are cultures associated with being gay obviously, but that's not a lifestyle. The "gay lifestyle" is a marketing slogan designed to sell being gay to gay people. I mean, I understand the point you're getting at, but I think using a term like "gay lifestyle" is particularly dangerous and has lots of homophobic baggage associated with it.

Experiencing homosexual attraction is not the same as engaging in homosexual acts. Those who engage in homosexual acts live their life differently from those who do not - that is, I would say, their lifestyle is different. This does not mean there is one "gay lifestyle" (anyone familiar with the subject will know how ridiculous that notion is). Now if you find the term questionable, we can replace it with behaviour or way of life, but the point remains.

I also don't think human sexual behaviour can be reduced to this silly binary of innate vs. chosen. And it's not important, anyway, if homosexuality is innate or not. I always find the insistence on the innate nature of homosexuality to be a bit strange - would anything change in our position if homosexuality was not innate? Obviously not.


Lifestylism is the belief that you can change society through altering the way you live your life. I don't see how accepting the premise that fighting assimilation of queer people is an anti-capitalist fight is a statement for lifestylism.

And in any case how is what BIXX said the same as saying "gay lifestyle" is revolutionary. Living in a world where marriage is prohibited (I don't think BIXX or anyone has ever said that) isn't a "gay lifestyle"...

I didn't say BIXX wants to prohibit marriage legally. I said that he wants to prohibit those who would be revolutionaries from marrying. The contention is that adopting a certain way of life, which includes not marrying and not "assimilating" - which is a contentious term as it is - is somehow conductive to the revolutionary struggle, and that deviation from that way of life makes one incapable of struggling against capitalism.


we should assimilate into other institutions too like the police and prisons and courts and adopt those lifestyles that go along with it and then get paid a bonus for allowing our images to be broadcast across the metropolis in a message saying 'hey see we're normal too don't burn us, we'll embrace your society in whole'

I think it's pretty disingenuous to equate acting as an enforcer of bourgeois state rule with marrying. Our objection to cops isn't how they live their life but their role in class society.


So, if two people decide to move in together, produce offspring together, raise those offspring together, provided it is consensual who precisely are they oppressing?

Their children, for one thing. Secondly, in different-sex relationships the woman is being oppressed.


Familial relationships all long predate the modern oppression of both women and homosexuals. The problem is not 'family' per say, but rather how society has come to construct its understanding of how families should be operate and hierarchy within them.

Familial relationships also long pre-date capitalism.

Not the modern family, which arose in the Industrial Revolution. There were family forms prior to that, of course, but these also served as the mechanism by which a class of direct producers was reproduced - and changed according to the economic structure of the dominant mode of production. The family in a slaveowining society was obviously not the same as a family in a feudal society. But the necessity for families arose with class society, and it will end when capitalism, the last form of class society, ends. The tasks of social reproduction will be handled by society, just as production of objects and services will.

[Invader Zim]

Their children, for one thing. Secondly, in different-sex relationships the woman is being oppressed.

Neither of these assertions is necessarily true.


But the necessity for families arose with class society, and it will end when capitalism, the last form of class society, ends. The tasks of social reproduction will be handled by society, just as production of objects and services will.

So, how precisely do you envision this system operating? Moreover, what level of contact, if any, do you believe a parent should have with their offspring? What 'right' does this society, which sounds fairly dystopian if it seeks to manage acutely private relationships, have to pluck an infant from its parents who may, funnily enough, have a vested interest in said infant's existence?

[BIXX]

Would anyone object if I split the anti-civ talk?
I think in this case they're very connected and discussions of queerness and civ are not easy to come by really.


I'm actually derailing the thread but since you brought it up I couldn't resist. What is the anti-civ position? If it's not what I've replied to here then what is it exactly?
At least the one I've seen applied here and really anyone I've read, I am referring to the structures that manipulate and force individuals to live a specific life with only aesthetic differences (gay marriage being part of the effort to make queers live a life exactly like non-queers) devoted to production and the greater society as a whole. There is more and there are more eloquent posters here who can explain it better but that should be sufficient.


I think it's pretty disingenuous to equate acting as an enforcer of bourgeois state rule with marrying. Our objection to cops isn't how they live their life but their role in class society.


But they marrying entails being an enforcer of family relations which are just as violent as the bourgeoisie state.

[BIXX]

Neither of these assertions is necessarily true.



So, how precisely do you envision this system operating? Moreover, what level of contact, if any, do you believe a parent should have with their offspring? What 'right' does this society, which sounds fairly dystopian if it seeks to manage acutely private relationships, have to pluck an infant from its parents who may, funnily enough, have a vested interest in said infant's existence?

The family is more than folks hanging out with their progeny dude.

[BIXX]

So "attacking assimilation" (which, it is made clear in the subsequent discussion is a certain kind of lifestyle where for example marriage is prohibited) means attacking capitalism.

That's one of the clearest statements of lifestylism I've ever seen on this site.

Actually I have said that marriage itself would prevent one from really attacking assimilation. The only marriage that makes sense is a tactical (strategic? I never quite got the nuances between the two) marriage, but honestly in the situation 99% of humans live in now that wouldn't make very much sense.

Attacking assimilation embodies attacking everything that wants to bring queers into the fold of capitalism and civilization.

[Invader Zim]

The family is more than folks hanging out with their progeny dude.

Indeed it is, but given that we can't seen to pin down what level of contact would exist in Xhar-Xhar's vision for the future among what would currently count as 'immediate' family, I think that trying to think about more elaborate concepts would be a little premature at this juncture.

[The Feral Underclass]

So, if two people decide to move in together, produce offspring together, raise those offspring together, provided it is consensual who precisely are they oppressing? Or is the idea of 'family' here the 1950s, nuclear family, complete with economically independent patriarch, economically dependent and purely domestic matriarch, and 2.4 children + dog? If so then, sure. But I rather think you have missed the last 60 years.

I think a more important question that helps deal with what you're asking is why does the family unit exist? What exactly is two people producing offspring and then co-existing? What is that? What is its function? Why do we assume this dynamic is normal and right? Who is it serving? How does it relate to society?


The fact is that if you want to tell other people how they should manage the dynamics of their relationships then I don't think you are going to get very far.

I don't really understand how posting my views about family on a message board can be characterised as telling other people how they should manage the dynamics of their relationships.

No one is telling anyone how to manage the dynamics of their relationships, but just because they exist and prevail doesn't mean those dynamics shouldn't be challenged and questioned. You may feel perfectly comfortable just accepting predominant assumptions, just like most people living in bourgeois society. But these social conventions are core part of bourgeois ideology and therefore if you're unprepared to bring them into question, ultimately, you're unprepared to address this ideological hegemonic dominance.

[The Feral Underclass]

I didn't say BIXX wants to prohibit marriage legally. I said that he wants to prohibit those who would be revolutionaries from marrying. The contention is that adopting a certain way of life, which includes not marrying and not "assimilating" - which is a contentious term as it is - is somehow conductive to the revolutionary struggle, and that deviation from that way of life makes one incapable of struggling against capitalism.

No he didn't. BIXX suggested that people who were married couldn't be anti-capitalists because being against assimilation and anti-capitalism are part of the same struggle, not that he wants to prohibit revolutionaries from marrying (you introduced the word prohibit into this discussion).

Honestly, you'd think the fact stuff is written down would make it easier to understand. I don't agree with his view but it kind of feels to me like you've taken the most extreme example of the queer liberation argument in what BIXX has said and then constructed your opposition around it, as if this is somehow the primary queer liberation argument on assimilation.

I don't really know what else to say since you've basically made this whole tangent up.

[The Feral Underclass]

I'm not sure that is factually correct entirely

The Roman Empire's conversion to Christianity saw the repression of same-sex relationships and customs, turning it into "the other." It was also at this time that polygamous relationships were banned. It was very much the advent of Christianity that saw the decline of polysexual dynamics.

[Invader Zim]

I think a more important question that helps deal with what you're asking is why does the family unit exist? What exactly is two people producing offspring and then co-existing? What is that? What is its function? Why do we assume this dynamic is normal and right? Who is it serving? How does it relate to society?

OK, these are interesting questions -- have you formulated any answers?




I don't really understand how posting my views about family on a message board can be characterised as telling other people how they should manage the dynamics of their relationships.

It struck me that you were being prescriptive, if not then my apologies for having misunderstood your point.


No one is telling anyone how to manage the dynamics of their relationships, but just because they exist and prevail doesn't mean those dynamics shouldn't be challenged and questioned. You may feel perfectly comfortable just accepting predominant assumptions, just like most people living in bourgeois society. But these social conventions are core part of bourgeois ideology and therefore if you're unprepared to bring them into question, ultimately, you're unprepared to address this ideological hegemonic dominance.

OK. But until someone here can conclusively show that the idea of 'family' is static, as opposed to fluid, and that such relationships are the root cause of a form of oppression then this all strikes me as interesting but moot.

Again, why is two people forming a specific form of emotional bond, making a joint decision to live with one another, and then forming an emotion bond with their offspring (biological or otherwise) 'oppressive'? Just because it forms a part of bourgeois society does not inherently make it something to be opposed. Surely, if there is an oppressive facet to familial relationships then it has to do with prevailing gender dynamics?

[The Intransigent Faction]

Then you're fucking useless yourself. Capitalism will be abolished through mass struggle. Marital status is irrelevant to building a mass struggle. You're a good example of what I meant about ghettoizing ourselves.

But...but...


All the worse for him if he has any relations with parents, friends, or lovers; he is no longer a revolutionary if he is swayed by these relationships.

Honestly, I think BIXX was probably being tongue-in-cheek.

If the insinuation is that a married person has more to lose in a situation of revolutionary violence, well, think what you want about that...The point is that, whether or not marriage remains in some form, marriage as a heteronormative bourgeois legal institution has to be challenged.

OP, I think you're absolutely right. Insofar as queer liberation limits itself to reforms within the system, even as far as demanding the right to partake in imperialist war efforts, it is prevented from being a potent revolutionary force. Instead of a demand for the right to participate in the military, there ought to be a rejection of the military as an imperialist institution.

In the case of marriage, there's a fair argument to be made that instead of a demand for an expanded legal definition, there should be a rejection of an archaic institution and of the legal fetishism that legitimates it. If some people just want to engage in a ceremony to celebrate a partnership and they want to call that marriage, this shouldn't be a barrier to their being revolutionaries. If it's a matter of visitation rights or tax benefits, then that's legal discrimination which should be addressed not merely by changing laws, but by revolution against the system and hence the legal institutions themselves. To hell with depending on the bourgeois state for recognition of the legitimacy of romantic partnerships.

[John Nada]

If the base reflects superstructure, you have a complete inversion of Marxist historical materialism. In any case everyone apart from some Maoist and Hoxhist orgs can agree that the juridical superstructure of the USSR and China was problematic. The problem is that Maoists claim that the base economic relations in the USSR - before capitalism was restored, which just happens to be the point when Mao fell out with the CPSU - were that of socialism. So not only do you have the notion that socialism can slide back into capitalism, but that it can support any old superstructure. Thus socialism is divorced from the struggle against oppression, which leads to all sorts of pathologies.I was think closer to Trotsky's theories on the superstructure:
If, beginning with the productive bases of society, we ascend the stages of the superstructure – classes, the State, laws, parties, and so on – it may be established that the weight of each additional part of the superstructure is not simply to be added to, but in many cases to be multiplied by, the weight of all the preceding stages. As a result, the political consciousness of groups which long imagined themselves to be among the most advanced, displays itself, at a moment of change, as a colossal obstacle in the path of historical development. To-day it is quite beyond doubt that the parties of the Second International, standing at the head of the proletariat, which dared not, could not, and would not take power into their hands at the most critical moment of human history, and which led the proletariat along the road of mutual destruction in the interests of imperialism, proved a decisive factor of the counter-revolution.

The great forces of production – that shock factor in historical development – were choked in those obsolete institutions of the superstructure (private property and the national State) in which they found themselves locked by all preceding development. Engendered by capitalism, the forces of production were knocking at all the walls of the bourgeois national State, demanding their emancipation by means of the Socialist organization of economic life on a world scale. The stagnation of social groupings, the stagnation of political forces, which proved themselves incapable of destroying the old class groupings, the stagnation, stupidity and treachery of the directing Socialist parties, which had assumed to themselves in reality the defense of bourgeois society – all these factors led to an elemental revolt of the forces of production, in the shape of the imperialist war. Human technical skill, the most revolutionary factor in history, arose with the might accumulated during scores of years against the disgusting conservatism and criminal stupidity of the Scheidemanns, Kautskies, Renaudels, Vanderveldes and Longuets, and, by means of its howitzers, machine-guns, dreadnoughts and aeroplanes, it began a furious pogrom of human culture.Source: https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1920/terrcomm/ch01.htm
Leon Trotsky]The state is a superstructure. To consider it independent of the character of the productive relations and the forms of ownership (as Urbahns, for instance, does in relation to the Soviet state) means to renounce the foundation of Marxism. But the state no more than the party is a passive superstructure. Under the influence of the convulsions emanating from the class basis of society, new processes occur in the state and party superstructure which – within certain limits – have an independent character, and when combined with the processes of the economic foundation itself, may acquire a decisive significance for the class nature of the whole regime, turning developments in one or the other direction for a considerable period.

It would be the worst form of doctrinairism, “Urbahnsism” turned inside out, to consider that the fact of the nationalization of industry, supplemented by the high tempo of development, in themselves assure an uninterrupted development to socialism, regardless of the processes in the party and the state. To think this means not to understand the functions of the party, its double and treble function in the only country of the proletarian dictatorship, at that an economically backward country. If we assume for a moment that those in charge of industry, on the one hand, and the leading strata of the workers, on the other, break loose from party discipline, which is fused with that of the state, then the road to socialism will be blocked: nationalized industry would begin to be differentiated between the struggling groups, the conflicts between the trust administration and the workers would begin to assume an open character, the trusts would acquire an ever greater independence, the beginnings made in planning would naturally be reduced to zero, dragging along with them the monopoly of foreign trade as well. All these processes leading to capitalism would inevitably amount to the crushing of the proletarian dictatorship. Source: https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1931/xx/thermbon.htm

The superstructure isn't completely separate from the base, having a dialectical relation, but both have some autonomy to an extent, with the base generally dictating the superstructure. But in some examples he gives, the superstructure is actively holding back the base from a DotP and by extension the road to socialism. At times, even one of the few, if not only, things holding a revolution back with a base overripe for being on the way to socialism long ago.

Obviously you can't just set up a superstructure totally divorced from its base and have fully automated luxury communism in one apartment room. At least not on the planet earth, this universe, as of 2015. But it does seem like changes, or seemingly lack thereof, in the superstructure can alter the base in terms productive relations and even productive forces. Not that a communist base can have a backward superstructure(although I'd hope even after communism they find stuff to improve on and we'd all look like backward savages), but that a backward superstructure would obstruct the base too from progressing in a desirable direction.

[A Revolutionary Tool]

What I don't understand is what queer liberation is supposed to mean. There are plenty of people who are straight who don't get married, who make it a game to see how many women they can sleep with, and they fit in perfectly fine within bourgeois society, it's not destroying capitalism at all.

[Rafiq]

And in all of those situations same-sex relationships were part of that cultural process. Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome -- even in Northern tribes, same-sex relationships were practiced. In fact, "gayness" was never actually a thing. It was part of a polysexual dynamics. People did what they want and engaged in what they wanted. Sure, there were regulations that governed these things, but it was only until the advent of Christianity and Western culture that homosexuality was seen as an "other" and monogamy between a man and a woman became an exclusive cultural norm at the expense of everything else. Of course it's a heteronormative concept. Monogamy was specifically engineered to ensure heterosexualities legal, cultural, political and social power and legacy.


Nothing is more exemplary of the myopic stupidity of postmodern orientalism than the notion that Christian sexual morality was wrought by some imperative to of heterosexuals to secure societal dominance. Firstly, what must be recognized is the fact that "heterosexuality" was always the dominant form of sexual relations, sexuality outside of this sphere was openly understood as an extension of the prevailing "binary" sexual logic. Take Rome for example - it was not shameful for a man to fuck another man. But here's what your missing: It was shameful for a man to be "fucked" by another man, to take the "submissive" role in the act. Homosexuality, like heterosexuality, was seldom anything but sexual violence. This holds true for every pre-modern society that "tolerated" such varying degrees of sexuality. The argument you are making is laughable - monogamy was "engineered" to ensure the dominance of heterosexuals? This reeks of essentialism, as though heterosexuality and homosexuality are innate. But nevermind that, this anti-sodomy morality was not some power grab by an imaginary caste of heterosexuals, those practicing sodomy, as you acknowledge, you were not exclusively "homosexual", so the laws were not made to persecute non-heterosexuals because there was precisely no such thing as heterosexuality. Instead, sexual acts had ramifications that were solely worth a shit as far as their implications in the sphere of the sexual symbolic order, or gender. To put it rather bluntly - because women were denied real sexual agency on a direct violent level anyway, these laws were significant in regulating the sexual practices of men in curtailing their "freedom" to do as they please. At a time where pedastry, sodomy, etc. were not distinguished, where sexual freedom was unthinkable outside the marginal egalitarian societies that would not have any historic consequence, this morality was not some intrusion on "freedom", it coincided with the emergence of a new Platonic sexual morality that marked the beginning of a sexual order that was irreducible to the predatory lustfulness that was not only "tolerated", but legitimized as part of some natural order by pagan society.

What's sad is that we are seeing an emergence of this anti-Christian sexual morality in this degenerate thresher of a society - not simply "hedonism", but the kind of "Hey, man, it's not my fault, it's my biological need" and whatever. Sexuality is trangrressively regulated at the level of ritual. We often look upon medieval sexual morality in terms of chastity, and anti-sexuality, ultra-platonism, and whatever. But what many forget was that the true radicals were the ones who insisted this logic to its very end - for example, the Bogomils, and it was precisely taking this logic seriously that was dangerous for the feudal order. The feudal order, at least before the protestant reformation, was riffen with Catholic corruption and the perverse logic of prohibition/permission, wherein everyone turned a "blind eye" but kept up the appearance of asexuality. During the reformation, you had moments wherein radical anabaptists, who were known for their strict understanding of sexuaity, would legalize divorce, and marriage itself was literally uprooted in the town of Munster during one of the rebellions and according to some sources promiscuity prevailed. This, however, would not have been possible without the pre-requisite of Christian sexual asceticism, for sexual freedom is nothing more than its universalization. Platonic asceticism is a reaction to the particularization of sexual relations and their relation to private property, but in the New Jerusalem it is sexual freedom which reigns supreme. And there is no contradiction, when both are juxtaposed to the vile and disgusting pagan sexuality which proceeded it, which glorified domination, subservience and cruelty NOT EVEN AS A MATTER OF MARITAL RITUAL to "keep your women in line" BUT ACTUAL SEXUAL LUST.

But this is not even the primary basis of argumentation here. The real error is failing to recognize that homosexuality in pre-modernity had an entirely different meaning, in fact, homosexuality was most often linked up with the most cruel accentuation of prevailing misogyny. It is not like those who are homosexual or bisexual in the modern era have an identical sexual orientation as the homosexuals of ancient Greece - this is a pure abstraction. The fact of the matter is that homosexuality was often linked with violent misogyny and was often a practice of aristocratic castes. And frankly, what you fail to mention is that Christianity did not simply deal with "homosexuality" as such, but sodomy, which was at the time - again - irrevocably an act of sexual violence associated with rape (unlike as it is today). You're absolutely wrong that "people did what they want and engaged in what they wanted". At every epoch "people did what they wanted", but the ramifications of these acts, how they were conceived at the level of society were entirely different. At no point was a sexual act just some arbitrary choice everyone respected.

So finally, and not simply to be provocative - one must recognize that Christian monogamy and Christian sexual morality were at the level of retrospective history progressive and necessary pre-requisties to the sexuality of the enlightenment and afterwards. Monogamy was absolutely, in context, progressive - one can even argue that the persistence of monogamy was vestigial of the egalitarianism of early Christianity, polygamy as it was practiced in ancient Israel was again irrevocably misogynistic. Monogamy, as it was wrought form Christianity, WAS NOT juxtaposed to free sexuality or whatever - even though monogamy had been prevalent throughout the Greco-Roman world long before Christianity, Christian monogamy was - at least at the level of theology - juxtaposed with old Hebrew polygamy.

So what you call "polysexual dynamics" were actually a network of the most brutal and cruel sexual oppression and slavery, the advent of "Christianity" and "Western culture" gave us Cartesian self-criticism and French revolution, without acknowledging Christianity as having been necessary in the historic trajectory path (made inevitable as solid steel RETROSPECTIVELY, i.e. as it shapes 2015) for Communism, you make yourself a reactionary. One should never forget that it was precisely the Fascists and the Fascists alone who were anti-modernists under the backdrop of a "respect" for pre-modernity. Had there been no Christianity (which is impossible to imagine, given real historical circumstances, but let's play the devil's advocate), there would have been no queer liberation as we know it. Queer liberation was absolutely wrought as the logical extension of the same values you condemn, but you are so faithless in the ideas of Communism in the here and now that - like other postmodern reactionaires - you make mythological projections upon pre-modern social formations in order to have a sense of guarantee. Communists on the other hand go to the end, Communists will go through and drag along with it the legacy of Christianity and modernity to the very bitter end.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

What I don't understand is what queer liberation is supposed to mean.
At the very least, it means abolishing heteronormativity, cisnormativity, and the bourgeois family structure. But it can be taken too far into bizarre dogmatism, as we've seen here with the notion that married people can't be revolutionaries.

[Rafiq]

Again, why is two people forming a specific form of emotional bond, making a joint decision to live with one another, and then forming an emotion bond with their offspring (biological or otherwise) 'oppressive'? Just because it forms a part of bourgeois society does not inherently make it something to be opposed. Surely, if there is an oppressive facet to familial relationships then it has to do with prevailing gender dynamics?

There is nothing "wrong" with this itself, but if the bourgeois family was reduced to this, its potent power and the sensitivities it invokes in you would not exist. Instead, in our society, "two people forming a specific form of emotional bond, making a join decision to live with one and another, and then forming an emotional bond with their offspring" (interesting pseudo-survivalist terminology), has ramifications that extend beyond such an innocent "choice" - it in fact reproduces the existing sexual order. Why people decide to do this is the point and the choice is not sufficient unto itself.

Needless to say, the idea that this practice would be abolished by decree is incredibly laughable. Destroying the bourgeois family doesn't have to be enforced onto anyone except the propertied classes. In the case of Russia, even when divorce was legalized, promiscuity and the breaking down of sexual relations was so common even among the peasantry that the state and the party would later take on a very conservative role in regulating sexuality (at the onset of collectivization, for example). For workers, various "experimental" communal rearing projects were set up that emphasized things like creative education, and so on, and these failed not because they were incompatible with "humans" but because they were severely under-funded (the state was dealing with bigger problems) and at the onset of collectivization a traditional family had to be enforced as the peasants were not at the level wherein such an advanced level of organization was possible (at least within the confines of the state's abilities).

For individual women, rearing children is a burden. Women are forced to rear children on social terms and yet are completely unaided on a social level (discounting government "welfare" which is not what I'm talking about) in being able to rear them. In addition, the burden of rearing children AS AN INDIVIDUAL disallows women to pursue other ends and live full lives. In Communism the rearing of children wouldn't be some big bad state "taking" kids from people, instead rearing children would be a social act that would already have directly social ramifications. In fact in most working class communities the only reason this isn't already the case is again because of private property, families not being able to afford sharing meals, living space, etc. all the time, and whatever. Society has already reached a level of socialization wherein destroying the bourgeois family would not even be difficult (public schooling, summer camps etc. are already common), and the family unit is already decaying for working people at large.

We are not saying that two people will be unable to live with each other. We are saying the bourgeois family would not have a basis of existence. Children would not be "owned" by individuals, like where do you draw the line? Could this hypothetical couple lock their kids in a basement and feed them religious poison whimsically? You can speak of "rights", but depriving children the right to participate in society would violate their "rights" even on your terms. Individuals would not have the "right" to own their children to do as they please with them - for the family, no matter how particiualr, is ALREADY not a private institution - it is already something with direct public ramifications. A "private" family which rapes its children is already violating pre-ordained rules set up for "private" individuals by society. In fact the petty bourgeoisie already complains about "da government wants to teach mah kids what i dont want em to hear" which is why usually the worst scum homeschool their kids.

[Invader Zim]

Could this hypothetical couple lock their kids in a basement and feed them religious poison whimsically?

Child abuse doesn't sound like 'whimsy' to me. Where did I advocate that parents 'own' their children? Where did I suggest that children should be afforded no legal protection from abuse? Where did I advocate legalising an abusive relationship?

Obviously, any 'privacy' afforded to couples is subject to various stipulations which are deemed of greater importance than privacy. The right of children not to be raped by their parents being one of them. This shouldn't really need saying...

Ultimately my point is that it is not the 'family' unit which is inherently oppressive, but rather the way in which contemporary society has come to define it which is (or at least often can be). The issue is one of the modern assignment of gender roles, and it is that which needs abolition. However, the abolition of 'family' would be an intolerable cruelty.

[A Revolutionary Tool]

At the very least, it means abolishing heteronormativity, cisnormativity, and the bourgeois family structure. But it can be taken too far into bizarre dogmatism, as we've seen here with the notion that married people can't be revolutionaries.
This is nothing new to the communist movement to want to get rid of the bourgeois family so I don't know why this is something people seem to want to argue about here. But to say a married person can't be a revolutionary because it's like falling into the capitalists trap is like saying a worker can't be a revolutionary because they have a job.

The issue is, like most issues, liberals don't analyze things through the lens of class, they are obsessed with equality on paper. Is it queer assimilation when the CEO of Apple(who's gay) wants to marry his partner of decades, adopt a child, and leave millions or billions of dollars to his children. Yeah I guess you can call it assimilation and complain about it but you've should have known better to think people of that sort would do anything else there's nothing revolutionary about two men or women or whatever having sex together. It's existed in class society for how long? It's like with race when people talk about the black bourgeois in disparaging terms like how could you leave your people to live in poverty. Us communists have been saying this forever, class is the issue, a queer person can own property and have all the queer sex they want with whomever they want and nothing changes. They go to work the next day like everybody else and join in the rat race to try and get to the top.

[The Feral Underclass]

This is nothing new to the communist movement to want to get rid of the bourgeois family so I don't know why this is something people seem to want to argue about here.

Right, but what about abolishing heteronormativity, including cisnormativity?


But to say a married person can't be a revolutionary because it's like falling into the capitalists trap is like saying a worker can't be a revolutionary because they have a job.

This is not a queer liberation view. It is BIXX's view.


The issue is, like most issues, liberals don't analyze things through the lens of class, they are obsessed with equality on paper. Is it queer assimilation when the CEO of Apple(who's gay) wants to marry his partner of decades, adopt a child, and leave millions or billions of dollars to his children. Yeah I guess you can call it assimilation and complain about it but you've should have known better to think people of that sort would do anything else there's nothing revolutionary about two men or women or whatever having sex together. It's existed in class society for how long? It's like with race when people talk about the black bourgeois in disparaging terms like how could you leave your people to live in poverty. Us communists have been saying this forever, class is the issue, a queer person can own property and have all the queer sex they want with whomever they want and nothing changes. They go to work the next day like everybody else and join in the rat race to try and get to the top.

What on Earth are you talking about?

Queer liberation is about addressing predominant heteronormative ideology and institutions that reinforce the existence of a heterosexist, cisnormative, patriarchical world view. Addressing these prevailing norms requires more than just being an anti-capitalist and abolishing capitalism.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Neither of these assertions is necessarily true.

This amounts to denying reality in order to preserve your argument. We know - or at least, as socialists, we should know - that in bourgeois society, children are treated as property of their parents and women workers are pushed either into unpaid domestic labour for their family, or a job in the lower strata of the proletariat (plus unpaid domestic labour).


So, how precisely do you envision this system operating? Moreover, what level of contact, if any, do you believe a parent should have with their offspring? What 'right' does this society, which sounds fairly dystopian if it seeks to manage acutely private relationships, have to pluck an infant from its parents who may, funnily enough, have a vested interest in said infant's existence?

I don't think talking about "rights" makes sense outside the very specific context of bourgeois-democratic rights. Now, I happily leave the details of how collective child-rearing will be organised to the future commissariat for young people. Nonetheless I imagine the raising of children will be left to professionals appointed by society, and organised in one definite physical location at least for very young children. If parents want to have contact with their children, alright, who's going to stop them, the Socialist Gendarmerie? It would be good for the socialisation of children to have contact with a lot of adults, as well as contact among themselves. But I doubt things like parentage will even be recorded in the socialist society, and the parents will not have any special position when it comes to the raising of the next generation.


But they marrying entails being an enforcer of family relations which are just as violent as the bourgeoisie state.

This is clearly wrong. The same apparatus enforces the rule of the burgeoisie and the rules surrounding the family - the police. Married people are not, as a rule, part of that apparatus.


No he didn't. BIXX suggested that people who were married couldn't be anti-capitalists because being against assimilation and anti-capitalism are part of the same struggle, not that he wants to prohibit revolutionaries from marrying (you introduced the word prohibit into this discussion).

This is semantic hair-splitting. I imagine you can understand what I said, and that you're just complaining for the sake of it.


Honestly, you'd think the fact stuff is written down would make it easier to understand. I don't agree with his view but it kind of feels to me like you've taken the most extreme example of the queer liberation argument in what BIXX has said and then constructed your opposition around it, as if this is somehow the primary queer liberation argument on assimilation.

One of the things you learn on RevLeft is to never get into an argument over what things like queer liberation, anti-civ etc. are "really", because the argument never ends and it never teaches you anything. So I'm not saying anything about the "primary queer liberation argument", I'm responding to what people have written in this thread.


The superstructure isn't completely separate from the base, having a dialectical relation, but both have some autonomy to an extent, with the base generally dictating the superstructure. But in some examples he gives, the superstructure is actively holding back the base from a DotP and by extension the road to socialism. At times, even one of the few, if not only, things holding a revolution back with a base overripe for being on the way to socialism long ago.

Obviously you can't just set up a superstructure totally divorced from its base and have fully automated luxury communism in one apartment room. At least not on the planet earth, this universe, as of 2015. But it does seem like changes, or seemingly lack thereof, in the superstructure can alter the base in terms productive relations and even productive forces. Not that a communist base can have a backward superstructure(although I'd hope even after communism they find stuff to improve on and we'd all look like backward savages), but that a backward superstructure would obstruct the base too from progressing in a desirable direction.

The superstructure can, in certain historically exceptional circumstances, act on the base. But the base doesn't reflect the superstructure, but the other way around. The period of transition is an exceptional situation because it is a period of temporary and fluid relations of production situated halfway between historically stable modes of production. But even then, the changes in the superstructure Trotsky talks about didn't come from nowhere, they were conditioned by the defeat of the world revolution in Germany, Italy etc.

The point was that if you claim the base of a society is socialist, i.e. that it has socialist relations of production, then it can't have a reactionary superstructure. If it has a reactionary superstructure, it's a good indicator that the society in question is not socialist.

Saying that the superstructure is autonomous from the base, when taken to its logical conclusion, leads to Poulantzas and Gramsci, hence all the references to ideology in this thread.


Indeed it is, but given that we can't seen to pin down what level of contact would exist in Xhar-Xhar's vision for the future among what would currently count as 'immediate' family, I think that trying to think about more elaborate concepts would be a little premature at this juncture.

I like how, according to RevLeft, I've invented around 30% to 70% of socialist theory, what a clever man I am.

[The Feral Underclass]

This is semantic hair-splitting. I imagine you can understand what I said, and that you're just complaining for the sake of it.

Oh for god sake. You're really not interesting enough for me to take time out of my day just to complain at for no other reasons but to complain.

The word "can't" isn't used here to denote active prohibition. He's using the word "can't" in the same way you'd use it if you said "an orange can't be an apple." I mean, if BIXX wants to come and correct me, then that's fine, but I'm fairly certain I'm right.


One of the things you learn on RevLeft is to never get into an argument over what things like queer liberation, anti-civ etc. are "really", because the argument never ends and it never teaches you anything. So I'm not saying anything about the "primary queer liberation argument", I'm responding to what people have written in this thread.

Why? Why would you respond to someone who makes a statement based on such a peripheral view? Don't you have better things to do?

[The Feral Underclass]

OK, these are interesting questions -- have you formulated any answers?

The family unit has served different functions throughout history. Those functions have variously depended on what strata or class you have been part of. Generally speaking, the family unit developed as it did to satisfy the function of reproduction within a specific framework of moral acceptability and solidify property rights. More importantly the family unit became a specific tool for the ruling class to socialise humans into a specific way of thinking, behaving and responding to the nature of class society. Internally the family functions based on conflict, hierarchy and inequality, and is therefore a useful disciplining tool. Due, also, to the pressures of procreation that families are put under, it also serves as a guarantee for a continued workforce.


It struck me that you were being prescriptive, if not then my apologies for having misunderstood your point.

No politics is useful if you are telling people how they should live their lives. The point is to challenge the basic assumptions of bourgeois society that constitutes it as bourgeois. The family being one aspect of that.


OK. But until someone here can conclusively show that the idea of 'family' is static, as opposed to fluid, and that such relationships are the root cause of a form of oppression then this all strikes me as interesting but moot.

Again, why is two people forming a specific form of emotional bond, making a joint decision to live with one another, and then forming an emotion bond with their offspring (biological or otherwise) 'oppressive'? Just because it forms a part of bourgeois society does not inherently make it something to be opposed. Surely, if there is an oppressive facet to familial relationships then it has to do with prevailing gender dynamics?

The family has stratified the working class into separate units. Within these units, conflict, hierarchy and inequality emerges as the prevailing way in which they are maintained. This unit exists in isolation, forcing working class people to deal, with varying success, with the complexities and hardships of capitalist society, rather than coming together collectively to understand how we build a communal society and address the fundamental thing that affects us.

What we have in society is a formation designed to socialise humans in a way that serves the prevailing economic domain, provides a workforce, maintains property rights, is used as a disciplining tool through its unequal and hierarchical structure, which breeds conflict and that isolates working class people by separating them, therefore making it easier for the ruling class to maintain its social order. Coupled with the fact that children and young people have their liberties negated, and add the gender dynamics, the family becomes nothing but a tool for the ruling class to better exploit and oppress working class people.

[Ele'ill]

I think it's pretty disingenuous to equate acting as an enforcer of bourgeois state rule with marrying. Our objection to cops isn't how they live their life but their role in class society


pretty sure any number of queers growing up stuck within a nuclear family would disagree with your limited conception of how social control works within society and how it is reproduced

[A Revolutionary Tool]

Right, but what about abolishing heteronormativity, including cisnormativity?Historically it hasn't, or at least not as much as it should have and we know (or at least I assume people on this board know) that at some points queer people have been oppressed by regimes that call themselves communist.




This is not a queer liberation view. It is BIXX's view. Thanks for clarifying, I didn't think that that was what many people thought and wouldn't say you thought that or others here did besides the people saying it.




What on Earth are you talking about?

Queer liberation is about addressing predominant heteronormative ideology and institutions that reinforce the existence of a heterosexist, cisnormative, patriarchical world view. Addressing these prevailing norms requires more than just being an anti-capitalist and abolishing capitalism.Of course I agree with you as I just pointed out that communists have not been the best allies at all times. Even as Bebel was making his speeches in the government demanding to decriminalize homosexuality Marx and Engels were writing homophobic letters mocking him. But at the same time you can't look away from how class society effects these things. It's why you can have gay republicans who care more about getting a tax cut than even equal protection under the law, their identity is more wrapped up in getting money and they don't care if everybody else in the party hates them. So is it a surprise to anyone when the gay rights movement bankrolled by wealthy queers and their friends gather a lot of money to fight for equality in the terms of gay marriage and the right to serve in the military? To these people that's what equality means, it's part and parcel of their capitalist mentality whether they're capitalists themselves or aspire to be them someday. What I think needs to be recognized is when the OP says they think gay marriage is used by our (and by "our" I'm assuming they mean other queers) enemies to get queers to submit and undergo self-sacrifice that it really isn't for some queers, to some it's very beneficial to them and how they want to live and part of that has to do with class. To those people what the OP, you, others here, and I want is self-sacrifice to them.

At the same time I don't think it's a hugely negative thing for queers to have equal rights (if there's a red army of the future queer people should be able to fight in it, I wouldn't have put a focus on it as a communist though in a capitalist country, no queers in the enemies military means less enemies to fight right ;) ) and the gay marriage debate really opened people up to the idea of accepting queer people altogether and legitimizing queer relationships whether people are married or not and that shouldn't be totally forgotten. You have a choice to assimilate and get married and so on but it's made it a lot easier to publicly not whereas before even wanting to assimilate would be impossible and would force you underground.

More radical change isn't going to have the same sort of backing from rich queers who just want to be viewed as "normal" with their white picket fences and perfect families and they dominate the conversation even though the majority of queers face poverty and a whole host of other problems.

[Rafiq]

Child abuse doesn't sound like 'whimsy' to me. Where did I advocate that parents 'own' their children? Where did I suggest that children should be afforded no legal protection from abuse? Where did I advocate legalising an abusive relationship?

You didn't, not at all directly of course - what sane person would?

My point is to address the pathology that fears the abolition of the family as "dystopian". My point is that to a large extent the family is already dead by merit of universal formal rules about what you can, and cannot do with your kids. That is to say, the family unit is already a social unit, already something that is expended to not only take a certain form, but raise its kids in a particular way for the common welfare of capitalist society.

Of course, my whole point is that in a society wherein the family no longer exists, and where rearing children takes on a direct social character, to "have" kids and insist on raising them yourself, i.e. "owning" them, would be akin to child abuse, and disallowing this is no more "dystopian" than disallowing people the ability to lock their children in the basement.

If the nuclear family, or the "family unit" prevails and remains prominent in a way similar to present day society, then Communism has already failed. Luckily for us, it would not, just as it clearly wasn't going to in the Soviet Union before the necessity of collectivization and industrialization, where its persistence and encouragement can be explained for very obvious reasons.

Think about why families are so important to people, though. Do you really think it's because that's the "human habitat"? In reality, the importance of the family is directly tied to private property, and alienation from one's surroundings. If one doesn't have a family, they have no one they can rely on, no one they can count on, no one with whom they feel a sense of belonging. But in a society of social solidarity, comradeship and where the necessity of each individual for each individual's well being is directly understood, the necessity of a family disappears. There are numerous, numerous instances wherein a cast of outcasts, runaways, or people simply stuck with each other who are entirely unrelated and whose ancestors came from entirely different regions of the world became something akin to a 'family'. This holds true for contemporary cults, religious mini societies, and guerrilla communities.


However, the abolition of 'family' would be an intolerable cruelty.

Such a huge social transformation would not entail some committee arbitrarily "abolishing" this or that. The point, which Marx recognized, was that the family is something that has to be actively defended by the state apparatus. If the legal basis of the family disappeared, and certainly if the social basis disappeared (i.e. private property, financial dependency) then the family would simply wither away.

It's not as though family relations would simply persist on a ground level and armed Chekists would storm houses making sure there are no families. It would mean a new order of life emerges where there is no room for it. Of course, it is entirely probable that for some time children will live in the same communities as their parents, but having a child would be a social act, not something private between two people. If it were so, then alienation would have persisted and the abolition of private property and capitalist relations was impossible for some magical reason.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

This is nothing new to the communist movement to want to get rid of the bourgeois family so I don't know why this is something people seem to want to argue about here.
What is new to the communist movement is also seeing heteronormativity and cisnormativity as things that are necessary to abolish, and I'd argue those are just as important. Not just for the liberation of queer people, but for all people. And there is resistance to the ideas of queer liberation within the communist movement (which is why I resigned from my previous organization two years ago).

[Црвена]

pretty sure any number of queers growing up stuck within a nuclear family would disagree with your limited conception of how social control works within society and how it is reproduced

Admittedly I've only skimmed this thread, but I feel like people are placing far too much importance on how those who happen to be revolutionaries live their personal lives. Even if everyone in the world spontaneously decided to form a non-nuclear family at once, the nuclear family would still be seen as the "proper way" because it came about as a result of capitalist production relations, which we would still have. The way to smash this view of the nuclear family is not to start living differently, but to destroy capitalism. How a revolutionary lives their life is no one else's business - what makes them a revolutionary is not their lifestyle but their contribution to fighting capitalism.

[Invader Zim]

I cannot claim to speak from experience, because I do not have children, but my understanding is that (from those that do) is the attachment felt is often incomprehensible to childless individuals like myself. The idea of plucking an infant from the arms of people who love their offspring is unseemly barbarism. Furthermore the reduction of reproduction to a social act strikes me as disturbing pro-natalist.

Maybe it is also an age thing. I'm 30, and until very recently I've never given children a second thought . I am too immature, too wedded to a particular "life style" which I would not want to give up to either engage in marriage or produce offspring, or adopt offspring. This opposition to such a lifestyle has led to the collapse of more than one very serious relationship of several years. Our happy relationship was less important than my partners desire to reproduce. To then expect people to reduce this sort of feeling, which I presume has something of a biological basis, to a social responsibility, is not viable.

How does one subvert brain chemistry?

[Rafiq]

I cannot claim to speak from experience, because I do not have children, but my understanding is that (from those that do) is the attachment felt is often incomprehensible to childless individuals like myself. The idea of plucking an infant from the arms of people who love their offspring is unseemly barbarism. Furthermore the reduction of reproduction to a social act strikes me as disturbing pro-natalist.

And who speaks for the innumerable people who have had children but want nothing to do with them? Is this somehow owed to some physiological deformity? Of course, as stated, the notion that infants would have to be "plucked" in the first place is a baseless assumption, a pathological fear of the propertied classes. That it might be "incomprehensible" to you and I sais very little about it being some mystifying, magical thing, but the reality that raising a child has real existential implications that are undoubtedly and irrevocably social - having and raising a child, producing a subject in society, accentuates the imbibment of the spiritual aroma of what it even means to be an individual in the first place in our society.

How does one "reduce" reproduction to a social act, and what would it be if not a social one? How does one learn to reproduce, how does one learn to take care of a child? None of these are instinctual. Animals which are hard-wired in relation to their offspring don't derive such profound meaning from the act because it's basically a passive process resulting from certain physical reflexes being activated. The emotional dimension of raising a child is absolutely and unquestionably - solely something that belongs to the category of the social sphere. There were practices in previous epochs that would have been deemed absolutely heartless and cruel in relation to parents and their children, and yet they persisted.

Even if we played the devil's advocate and stated that some kind of innate, magical process, "biology" or a "soul" if you will (which are here not distinguishable at the level of empirical reasons to think they account for them), then the human experience would result from a profound extrapolation or interpretation of those "innate" forces, and those would undoubtedly be social.

Having a child has profound emotional implications. But this doesn't need to be - in fact, cannot be, explained in terms of biology or chemistry:


Our happy relationship was less important than my partners desire to reproduce. To then expect people to reduce this sort of feeling, which I presume has something of a biological basis, to a social responsibility, is not viable.

And this is a false, superstitious presumption. Perhaps the partner in question - and I speak purely in hypothetical terms, so do not take this personally - rather than out of some inexplicable innate biological reason, understood having children or what you call in survivalist terms "reproducing" or "having offspring" as having profound implications about the relationship with you, one being the level of commitment to it "having offspring" entails, the emotional dimension of sharing the experience of raising a child, raising one and sharing the experience of having it grow into a real human subject. Raising a child is usually what keeps most long term marraiges together in fact, for the child encapsulates commitment to each other in allowing it to grow, experiencing that, and so on. You are confusing two entirely separate realms of existence - biology and the social. "Biology" does not care about anything, and has no meaning. The social alone produces meaning to the biological, to the experience of having "offspring".

And again, one needs to broaden their imagination or acknowledge the all-encompassing nature of such a social transformation. Such feelings are already of a social nature, and of course - children in a Communist society would have profound emotional implications for communities and individuals, for they would represent - in an absolute sense - the relationship between the totality of relations between individuals and the individual constituents in the purest form, they would encapsulate the relationship between the Communist social order and the person who becomes a part of it (for the simple reason that there are numerous ways in which children can be reared, across historic contexts. To rear them in a particular way, is expressive of the social order, Communist or otherwise).

My point is not to "reduce" rearing children to a cynical process of "oh, let's put in our due in raising these snot nosed little shits". Social process encompass everything about the "human" experience, feelings included, because the definite form of human life is that of the definite form of production. In fact, for all alleged "turning Communism into a religion" and so on that I get mocked for, this is precisely my point. Every time I try and tell people why there would be no ferraris in Communism, this is my point: production is not "used" by humans, it constitutes the definite mode of living itself, there is no dimension of life that "uses" productive processes to meet some finite ends.


How does one subvert brain chemistry?

This is already a false question. There are no neuro-chemicals for the family. There are chemicals involved with that process, certainly, but those chemicals can be involved with other processes too. The essential basis of what it means to be human is not in the brain, because this essential meaning is historically relative. Beyond that there is flesh and bone.

Social relations constitute a reality of its own, a physical one even. Without this, brain chemicals are meaningless.

[Rafiq]

Queer liberation is about addressing predominant heteronormative ideology and institutions that reinforce the existence of a heterosexist, cisnormative, patriarchical world view. Addressing these prevailing norms requires more than just being an anti-capitalist and abolishing capitalism.

And this is nonsense because it fails to understand the functional nature of this. "Heteronormativity", or whatever you want to call it, is not some vestigial result of Christian sexual morality 300 AD. We learn from history that we learn nothing from history. Nothing is done, in the present, because of "tradition". Things are actively pereptuated and constitute their own totality. Capitalism doesn't exist today because it existed yesterday - capitalism can exist today without ever having existed before, because it actively reproduces itself.

The processes which actively perpetuate sexual oppression of all forms are class processes. So yes, addressing them requires nothing further than anti-capitalism, and if your anti-capitalism does not take to its logical extension opposition to sexual oppression, then you should have to re-evaluate just how thorough such a "radical" critique of capitalism is in fact.

Understanding these things in terms of "normativity" is itself ridiculous. Gay communities are just as much inflicted by their relation to "heteronormativity", insofar as dynamics exist between "bottoms" and "tops" that are to an extent gendered.

Sexuality that is free from prevailing relations of gender requires no postmodern acknowledgement that "Hey, who are you to define what's "normal" bro?" but the destruction of gender itself - in which case, we might expect everyone in a Communist society to be more or less bisexual. Things are conceived as normal, or "hegemonic" for a reason, they serve a systemic function. It is not because people need to have their "world-view" altered, it is not because awareness needs to be spread through political correctness.

You speak of "heteronormativity" and "cisnormativity", but trans-sexuality and homosexuality are absolutely contingent upon heterosexuality and cis-gender, they are not autonomous or separate idiosyncratic kinds of sexuality that are simply not "respected" by those unlike them, their oppression stems PRECISELY from their REAL relationship to prevailing sexual relations. That means non-heterosexuals and non-cis gendered individuals are already a part of the "heteronormative" or "cisnormative" totality, both of which are silly concepts in the first place, I might add which emanate a profound lack of understanding of sexuality in terms of the symbolic order.

[BIXX]

Admittedly I've only skimmed this thread, but I feel like people are placing far too much importance on how those who happen to be revolutionaries live their personal lives. Even if everyone in the world spontaneously decided to form a non-nuclear family at once, the nuclear family would still be seen as the "proper way" because it came about as a result of capitalist production relations, which we would still have. The way to smash this view of the nuclear family is not to start living differently, but to destroy capitalism. How a revolutionary lives their life is no one else's business - what makes them a revolutionary is not their lifestyle but their contribution to fighting capitalism.

However capitalism can't be abolished without the abolition of the family. Assimilation prevents that.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

However capitalism can't be abolished without the abolition of the family. Assimilation prevents that.
And yet there have been many married revolutionaries and many single supporters of the bourgeois order.

[Rafiq]

What does that have to do with the family's abolition, might I ask?

The family is not some lifestyle preference. It is systemic.

[BIXX]

And yet there have been many married revolutionaries and many single supporters of the bourgeois order.

"revolutionaries"

And yeah, single people van be lame too. I didn't say they were good.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

"revolutionaries"
If they espouse revolutionary politics and act on them, that makes them a revolutionary, married or not.

I was married once, because doing so gave me access to my partner's health insurance at a time when I was having some serious health issues.

[The Feral Underclass]

But at the same time you can't look away from how class society effects these things.

I don't deny this. Defeating capitalism is the first step to ending heteronormative domination, but prevailing ideologies won't just dissipate when we alter the economic prescriptions of society. Their legacy will continue. The queer liberation argument, therefore, is that we have to address that now and in a revolutionary situation. We have to build a movement against bourgeois ideology. We can't just wait for capitalism to be destroyed.

[The Feral Underclass]

I cannot claim to speak from experience, because I do not have children, but my understanding is that (from those that do) is the attachment felt is often incomprehensible to childless individuals like myself. The idea of plucking an infant from the arms of people who love their offspring is unseemly barbarism. Furthermore the reduction of reproduction to a social act strikes me as disturbing pro-natalist.

Why would any one pluck a child from the arms of people? What are you talking about?


Maybe it is also an age thing. I'm 30, and until very recently I've never given children a second thought . I am too immature, too wedded to a particular "life style" which I would not want to give up to either engage in marriage or produce offspring, or adopt offspring. This opposition to such a lifestyle has led to the collapse of more than one very serious relationship of several years. Our happy relationship was less important than my partners desire to reproduce. To then expect people to reduce this sort of feeling, which I presume has something of a biological basis, to a social responsibility, is not viable.

How does one subvert brain chemistry?

Wanting to reproduce is a biological desire, just as nurturing young is. The issue is not reproduction or nurturing, but how that reproduction and nurturing is structured, and how it relates to society more widely. Having a biological urge to reproduce and nurture young isn't proof that the family unit as it exists is not oppressive or exploitative.

[Ele'ill]

Admittedly I've only skimmed this thread, but I feel like people are placing far too much importance on how those who happen to be revolutionaries live their personal lives. Even if everyone in the world spontaneously decided to form a non-nuclear family at once, the nuclear family would still be seen as the "proper way" because it came about as a result of capitalist production relations, which we would still have. The way to smash this view of the nuclear family is not to start living differently, but to destroy capitalism. How a revolutionary lives their life is no one else's business - what makes them a revolutionary is not their lifestyle but their contribution to fighting capitalism.

I don't think family is a lifestyle. I think it's on par with police patrols, prisons, and tied directly to religion.

[Rafiq]

Wanting to reproduce is a biological desire, just as nurturing young is. The issue is not reproduction or nurturing, but how that reproduction and nurturing is structured, and how it relates to society more widely. Having a biological urge to reproduce and nurture young isn't proof that the family unit as it exists is not oppressive or exploitative.

What is a "biological desire"? How does that even work? So if you have someone born in the wilderness, kept alive somehow, would they have a "biological" desire to reproduce?

The desire to reproduce and "nurture young" belongs to the realm of consciousness, not some inexplicable magical "thing" inside of you. Even dolphins and chimps need to learn. Animals which are hard-wired to "reproduce" do not have any desires, they have certain physical reflexes that trigger certain behaviors. That is not how humans work.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Oh for god sake. You're really not interesting enough for me to take time out of my day just to complain at for no other reasons but to complain.

The word "can't" isn't used here to denote active prohibition. He's using the word "can't" in the same way you'd use it if you said "an orange can't be an apple." I mean, if BIXX wants to come and correct me, then that's fine, but I'm fairly certain I'm right.

And, according to the ICC, "parasites" can't be a part of the "proletarian milieu". It's just a fact, then, isn't it, simply a neutral little fact that does not imply any sort of active political perspective. Do you really have no understanding of how political rhetoric works? Odd for a man who places so much emphasis on his political work.


Why? Why would you respond to someone who makes a statement based on such a peripheral view? Don't you have better things to do?

Coming from you, this has to be intentional self-parody.


pretty sure any number of queers growing up stuck within a nuclear family would disagree with your limited conception of how social control works within society and how it is reproduced

Almost everyone, queer or not, is stuck within a nuclear family. And yes, these are often awful. Which is why I object when the family is romanticised as e.g. LH did recently (claiming that family members were more likely than anyone to care about us - haha). That doesn't make members of a family enforcers of bourgeois rule, though. Some of them enforce that rule, sporadically and always contingent on the backing of the state apparatus. But their entire social being is not determined by the fact that they enforce that rule, as it is with cops and screws. Most people participate in the enforcement of some aspect of bourgeois rule, sporadically and contingently. Doesn't mean they're the same as cops or screws either.


I cannot claim to speak from experience, because I do not have children, but my understanding is that (from those that do) is the attachment felt is often incomprehensible to childless individuals like myself.

That doesn't even make sense. If it's incomprehensible, how were you able to understand them talking about it? Whatever attachment parents feel to children - which in my experience tends to be exaggerated by people - it's historically contingent. A Roman parent felt no compunction about killing his children for example.


The idea of plucking an infant from the arms of people who love their offspring is unseemly barbarism.

Plucking an infant? By who, the Socialist Police Force? We're talking about society organising to collectivise the raising of children - hardly something unprecedented. To quote from a recent-ish WV (http://www.icl-fi.org/english/wv/1069/communism.html):

'Feminists in the U.S. and elsewhere usually denounce the proposition that “biology equals destiny” as an expression of male chauvinism. Yet Goldman makes the assumption that women, or for that matter men, who are not biologically related to infants and young children cannot develop the same protective feelings toward them as their birth mother. Parents of adopted children may well argue with this idea. But modern adoption practices in the U.S. are also based on the concept that only in a “family”—be it biological mother and father, adoptive parents or gay or transgender parents—can a child get the proper care and love. Far from being a fact of nature, the idea that raising children can succeed only in a family setting is a social construct. When people lived as hunter-gatherers (the vast majority of the 200,000 years our species has been around), the band or tribe, not the “pair bond,” was the basic unit of human existence. One example from the not-too-distant past comes from the testimony of 17th-century Jesuit missionaries among the Naskapi hunting people of Labrador. As related by Eleanor Burke Leacock in her fine introduction to Engels’ Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (International Publishers, 1972), Jesuits complained about the sexual freedom of Naskapi women, pointing out to one man that “he himself was not sure that his son, who was there present, was his son.” The Naskapi’s reply is telling: “Thou hast no sense. You French people love only your own children; but we love all the children of our tribe.” '

[The Feral Underclass]

And, according to the ICC, "parasites" can't be a part of the "proletarian milieu". It's just a fact, then, isn't it, simply a neutral little fact that does not imply any sort of active political perspective. Do you really have no understanding of how political rhetoric works? Odd for a man who places so much emphasis on his political work.

Whether it's a fact or not is irrelevant to me. You are more than welcome to debate with BIXX whether or not married people can be revolutionaries. The issue is that you haven't understood properly what he meant. Your inabilities to grasp the English language are not my fault. The point BIXX was making is that there is an ideological contradiction between being married and being a revolutionary. Of course people can be revolutionaries and married. Rapists are revolutionaries, racists are revolutionaries, sexists are revolutionaries and so on and so on. I mean, what exactly do you imagine BIXX is advocating? That political organisations prohibit married people from joining them? Why would BIXX care about what political organisations do or do not prohibit when you take into consideration his politics.


Coming from you, this has to be intentional self-parody.

Well, I've always thought your views peripheral, but I'm glad you've finally admitted to it.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

Of course people can be revolutionaries and married. Rapists are revolutionaries, racists are revolutionaries, sexists are revolutionaries and so on and so on.
That's right, getting married is just like being a rapist. :rolleyes:

[The Feral Underclass]

That's right, getting married is just like being a rapist. :rolleyes:

Lol. Of course the point I was making, which you've spectacularly missed, is that being married, much like being a rapist or being a racist, is contradictory to the ideology inherent in producing a communist society.

[Invader Zim]

If it's incomprehensible, how were you able to understand them talking about it?

Of course it is impossible for one individual to truly know how another person feels, but that does not mean that it is impossible to gather an impressionistic understanding based on what they communicate. Understanding is not binary, rather it is a spectrum. I should have thought that this is obvious. Apparently not.


Whatever attachment parents feel to children - which in my experience tends to be exaggerated by people

Your ability to read minds to truly know their emotions is impressive.


- it's historically contingent. A Roman parent felt no compunction about killing his children for example.


Some Romans, by no means all. Meanwhile, the infanticide of the offspring of prostitutes was applied whether the mothers liked it or not. The conclusion you seem to be driving at, that because there were instances of infanticide it is possible to make sweeping historical judgements about attitudes towards infants in history is actually deeply ahistorical.


When people lived as hunter-gatherers (the vast majority of the 200,000 years our species has been around), the band or tribe, not the “pair bond,” was the basic unit of human existence.

An assertion for which no evidence is provided, and part of a passage which suggests that the author has no idea what social construction theory actually is. Moreover, it clearly based on Engel's out-moded pronouncements on the origins of the family which were, themselves, based on poorly-evidenced 19th century anthropological assumptions. In fact, we know that most of what Engel's argued was wrong, and that the "primitive" division of labour in pre-history which he outlined the male hunter-gatherer and warrior, and the domesticated female is little more than a crude analysis of medieval peasantry extrapolated back into the more distant past.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

Lol. Of course the point I was making, which you've spectacularly missed, is that being married, much like being a rapist or being a racist, is contradictory to the ideology inherent in producing a communist society.
I understood you just fine. Of all the things you could compare to marriage in terms of being contradictory to producing a communist society (in your view), you chose to lead with rape.

[The Feral Underclass]

I understood you just fine. Of all the things you could compare to marriage in terms of being contradictory to producing a communist society (in your view), you chose to lead with rape.

Clearly you don't understand. I haven't compared marriage to rape. What I said was that there are married revolutionaries, just like there are racist revolutionaries and revolutionaries who are rapists. The point being that being a revolutionary doesn't preclude you from having contradictory ideas and practices.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

Clearly you don't understand. I haven't compared marriage to rape. What I said was that there are married revolutionaries, just like there are racist revolutionaries and revolutionaries who are rapists. The point being that being a revolutionary doesn't preclude you from having contradictory ideas and practices.
You're saying "all these things are comparable in some way", which includes being married and being a rapist. But I can think of dozens of things that might be contradictory to communism that aren't rape or racism, and being married doesn't make one a danger to other communists like a rapist is nor does it divide the workers' movement the way racism does. So, again, why make such an extreme comparison?

[The Feral Underclass]

You're saying "all these things are comparable in some way", which includes being married and being a rapist. But I can think of dozens of things that might be contradictory to communism that aren't rape or racism, and being married doesn't make one a danger to other communists like a rapist is nor does it divide the workers' movement the way racism does. So, again, why make such an extreme comparison?

The example isn't extreme at all. It is a widely prevalent and common example of the contradictory behaviour of revolutionaries. Sexual assault and rape is a real problem within revolutionary organisations. I use the example because it is relevant. In any case, I'm not saying that being married and being a rapist are the same thing. What I said was that being a rapist revolutionary and being being a married revolutionary are just as contradictory.

[BIXX]

You're saying "all these things are comparable in some way", which includes being married and being a rapist. But I can think of dozens of things that might be contradictory to communism that aren't rape or racism, and being married doesn't make one a danger to other communists like a rapist is nor does it divide the workers' movement the way racism does. So, again, why make such an extreme comparison?

You're ignoring the point or have no clue what you're saying.

[The Feral Underclass]

You're ignoring the point or have no clue what you're saying.

This is a common theme with Danielle Ni Dhighe.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

In any case, I'm not saying that being married and being a rapist are the same thing. What I said was that being a rapist revolutionary and being being a married revolutionary are just as contradictory.
Sexually assaulting people is just as contradictory as getting married? Name one rational reason for raping someone. I can name some for getting married.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

You're ignoring the point or have no clue what you're saying.
You and Feral need to just get a room at this point.

[The Feral Underclass]

Sexually assaulting people is just as contradictory as getting married? Name one rational reason for raping someone. I can name some for getting married.

I didn't say that sexually assaulting people is as contradictory as getting married.

[The Feral Underclass]

You and Feral need to just get a room at this point.

I think reducing the fact that two people support aspects of each other's opinions to some kind of sexual frisson sums up entirely the lack of intellect with which you engage in these discussions.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

I didn't say that sexually assaulting people is as contradictory as getting married.
Fine, "being a rapist revolutionary and being being a married revolutionary are just as contradictory." However you want to spin it, on some level you are equating rapists and married people to justify absurd statements about married revolutionaries.

[The Feral Underclass]

Fine, "being a rapist revolutionary and being being a married revolutionary are just as contradictory." However you want to spin it, on some level you are equating rapists and married people to justify absurd statements about married revolutionaries.

The only way someone could think I was equating rapists with married people is if they are stupid.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

The only way someone could think I was equating rapists with married people is if they are stupid.
"Being a rapist revolutionary and being being a married revolutionary are just as contradictory."

[The Feral Underclass]

"Being a rapist revolutionary and being being a married revolutionary are just as contradictory."

Yes. In terms of producing a communist society, marriage, like rape, occupy the same contradictory 'sphere'. You cannot have a communist society where rape is a norm and where marriage is a norm because communism necessarily rejects bourgeois institutions like marriage and structural problems like violence towards women. You can't have communism minus rape but with marriage, or minus marriage and with rape. They are both contradictory in equal measure.

That's not the same as saying that being married and being a rapist are literally the same thing, nor is it me saying they are equitable as things that happen in society. Ugh.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

Yes. In terms of producing a communist society, marriage, like rape, occupy the same contradictory 'sphere'. You cannot have a communist society where rape is a norm and where marriage is a norm because communism necessarily rejects bourgeois institutions like marriage and structural problems like violence towards women. You can't have communism minus rape but with marriage, or minus marriage and with rape. They are both contradictory in equal measure.
No one is arguing in favor of communism with either rape or marriage, but there are people arguing that married people can't contribute to revolutionary struggle. Within that framework, a comrade who's a rapist and a comrade who's married aren't "contradictory in equal measure." In terms of producing a communist society, only one of those is actively harmful to the struggle.

[Quail]

You're ignoring the point or have no clue what you're saying.


This is a common theme with Danielle Ni Dhighe.

I don't think this kind of personal attack is necessary.

[The Feral Underclass]

I don't think this kind of personal attack is necessary.

It's not a personal attack. It is a common theme that this user fails to understand things I am saying to them.

[The Feral Underclass]

No one is arguing in favor of communism with either rape or marriage, but there are people arguing that married people can't contribute to revolutionary struggle. Within that framework, a comrade who's a rapist and a comrade who's married aren't "contradictory in equal measure." In terms of producing a communist society, only one of those is actively harmful to the struggle.

I will try and unpack all this when I have more time. Until then, all I can do is link you to this picture. (http://cdn2.knowyourmobile.com/sites/knowyourmobilecom/files/styles/gallery_wide/public/8/89/Funny-Meme-Jackie-Chan-wallpaper-1920x1080.jpg)

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

I will try and unpack all this when I have more time. Until then, all I can do is link you to this picture. (http://cdn2.knowyourmobile.com/sites/knowyourmobilecom/files/styles/gallery_wide/public/8/89/Funny-Meme-Jackie-Chan-wallpaper-1920x1080.jpg)
How did you get a picture of me reading your posts? Wait, why am I an Asian man?

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

It's not a personal attack. It is a common theme that this user fails to understand things I am saying to them.
Is there a reason you refer to me as "them" rather than "her"? You've done that before. Seems odd to ungender a trans woman. Deliberate attempt to troll?

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Of course it is impossible for one individual to truly know how another person feels, but that does not mean that it is impossible to gather an impressionistic understanding based on what they communicate. Understanding is not binary, rather it is a spectrum. I should have thought that this is obvious. Apparently not.

If all you have is an "impressionistic understanding", how can you say with any certainty that you can't know how the other individual feels? This kind of argument is surprisingly common, and to some it's superficially plausible as many are socially conditioned to view human experience as something mysterious (all the better to smuggle in some kind of soul), but it's not cogent. If you don't have a good understanding of something, how can you proclaim it to be unknowable?


Your ability to read minds to truly know their emotions is impressive.

Oh, it's not impressive at all. I would guess that you have the same ability. After all, anyone who couldn't "read" other people would be seriously disadvantaged when it comes to social interaction. Our model of other people's minds is one of the key elements of human intelligence. Of course, we can sometimes "read" other people incorrectly. And we know this, not because there is some mysterious emotion-quale that is eternally incomprehensible to our human minds, but because their subsequent behaviour does not line up with our initial assumptions. And it's interesting that you would assume that, when I said "in my experience" I was talking about random people I met on the street, not people I have known for a long time. But even that anecdotal point can be expanded; given the near-universality of claims about family love, one would only need to consult statistics for the number of children thrown out by parents, sent to reeducation camps, etc.


Some Romans, by no means all. Meanwhile, the infanticide of the offspring of prostitutes was applied whether the mothers liked it or not. The conclusion you seem to be driving at, that because there were instances of infanticide it is possible to make sweeping historical judgements about attitudes towards infants in history is actually deeply ahistorical.

It was a bit more than "instances of infanticide", we're talking about a legal, acknowledged and archeologically attested-to practice.


An assertion for which no evidence is provided, and part of a passage which suggests that the author has no idea what social construction theory actually is. Moreover, it clearly based on Engel's out-moded pronouncements on the origins of the family which were, themselves, based on poorly-evidenced 19th century anthropological assumptions. In fact, we know that most of what Engel's argued was wrong, and that the "primitive" division of labour in pre-history which he outlined the male hunter-gatherer and warrior, and the domesticated female is little more than a crude analysis of medieval peasantry extrapolated back into the more distant past.

Yeah, Engels was wrong on the details of the sexual division of labour in prehistoric societies. Archeology and anthropology have advanced quite a bit from Morgan and Engels. Nonetheless the main thesis of "On the Origin..." is still quite defensible, despite the conscious efforts of many bourgeois theoreticians, particularly those associated with evo-psych drivel, to refute them. In any case, the term "band society" is not one that would have been familiar to Engels. The term, as I understand it (anthropology is an area I am interested in, but it's not my field and I rarely have the time to indulge in reading about it, although it would be more pleasant than posting here I guess), became prominent in anthropology after Sahlins's work, and the evidence for the primitive society being first organised as a band society seems compelling.

Not every mention of social construction is a reference to social constructivism, just as not every mention of function is a reference to functionalism.

[The Feral Underclass]

Is there a reason you refer to me as "them" rather than "her"? You've done that before. Seems odd to ungender a trans woman. Deliberate attempt to troll?

You really know how to create an argument out of thin air, don't you? I don't know anything about you.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

Yes. In terms of producing a communist society, marriage, like rape, occupy the same contradictory 'sphere'. You cannot have a communist society where rape is a norm and where marriage is a norm because communism necessarily rejects bourgeois institutions like marriage and structural problems like violence towards women. You can't have communism minus rape but with marriage, or minus marriage and with rape. They are both contradictory in equal measure.

That's not the same as saying that being married and being a rapist are literally the same thing, nor is it me saying they are equitable as things that happen in society. Ugh.

Maybe not literally but practically...

[The Feral Underclass]

Maybe not literally but practically...

Is this really what this discussion has been reduced to? A comparison between rape and marriage? It's pathetic.

This issue arouse out of the fact that Xhar-Xhar misinterpreted the word "can't." The point I was making was that the word can't wasn't being used in a prohibitive way, I.e married people can't physically be revolutionaries. I pointed out that even rapists are revolutionaries (something widely reported on actually worse than being married) and that the word "can't" was being used in the same way as an orange can't be an apple. Clearly rape and marriage are not literally or even figuratively the same thing; they are not practically the same thing either. They are, however, in terms of how they relate ideologically to the production of communism, the same thing. You cannot have communism with marriage or rape in equal measure. The severity or practical similarities of each isn't what's in question.

[BIXX]

I don't think this kind of personal attack is necessary.

Well perhaps DND should refrain from doing exactly what was pointed out in those posts. Where are you when everyone is just accusing me of trolling in that case without responding to my actual pointspoints? If you're gonna pretend to enforce the rules quail enforce them across the board.


Is there a reason you refer to me as "them" rather than "her"? You've done that before. Seems odd to ungender a trans woman. Deliberate attempt to troll?

You misgsndered me before so are you a troll? Pls stop sucking.

Can we just get back on the discussion at hand rather than arguing about users word choice?

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I didn't misinterpret the word "can't", you insufferable person. I understood the claim just fine, and I'm not interested in your attempts to split hairs and lawyer for your buddy BIXX. I don't think you're interested in these things either; they're just an opportunity for you to throw around the latest buzzword and insult everyone who isn't a real strong manly revolutionary like you. Today it's "production of communism", a few months ago it was the supposed effeteness of Western communists, who knows what it will be tomorrow.

And your argument is obviously a complete non-sequitur unless one accepts your peculiar lifestylist interpretation of communisation theory. You can't have communism with money, either, that doesn't mean that anyone who touches money is not a revolutionary. (Conversely, people who don't touch money, don't have money etc. are not necessarily revolutionaries.)

[The Feral Underclass]

I didn't misinterpret the word "can't", you insufferable person. I understood the claim just fine, and I'm not interested in your attempts to split hairs and lawyer for your buddy BIXX.

If you didn't misinterpret, what was the point of your argument? Maybe I misunderstood, because in that case I have no idea what the point of your argument was...


I don't think you're interested in these things either; they're just an opportunity for you to throw around the latest buzzword and insult everyone who isn't a real strong manly revolutionary like you. Today it's "production of communism", a few months ago it was the supposed effeteness of Western communists, who knows what it will be tomorrow.

Honestly, man, what are you on about? How do you come up with this shit? Why would you come to the conclusion that I would waste my time involving myself in debates I don't care about just to say buzzwords? What are talking about? Why would I do that?...It amazes me how this stuff comes in your mind.

Thinking Western communists are effete and understanding what the production of communism is aren't mutually exclusive. I think both of those things at the same time. And I'm not embarrassed about my political development and I think it's telling about the person you are to imply that coming to or experimenting with different opinions is somehow a negative aspect of someone's politics. The anachronistic, inflexible and inert nature of your politics is something you should be concerned about, not proud of.


And your argument is obviously a complete non-sequitur unless one accepts your peculiar lifestylist interpretation of communisation theory. You can't have communism with money, either, that doesn't mean that anyone who touches money is not a revolutionary. (Conversely, people who don't touch money, don't have money etc. are not necessarily revolutionaries.)

Dude, you don't understand communisation theory let alone know what my interpretation of it is.

Obviously people who use money are revolutionaries, just like married people and rapists are revolutionaries. But how can someone be a revolutionary if they think money can be part of a communist society, or if marriage and violence against women can be part of a communist society. Someone can be a revolutionary, in the sense that they can say "I am a revolutionary" and they can even argue for a communist society and be in a revolutionary organisation, but that doesn't mean they are a revolutionary. I could say I'm a banana and buy a costume and lay still in a giant bowl, but it wouldn't mean I am a banana.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

You really know how to create an argument out of thin air, don't you? I don't know anything about you.
Since I called you out for the same thing a few months ago (ungendering me), I find that hard to believe.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

You misgsndered me before so are you a troll? Pls stop sucking.
He's done it before, so it's a legitimate question. If you misgender/ungender a trans person and they call your attention to it, then you do it again, it's certainly suggestive of intent.

[The Feral Underclass]

Since I called you out for the same thing a few months ago (ungendering me), I find that hard to believe.

Your paranoid delusions about my motives are for you to contend with. Believe me; don't believe. I really don't give a fuck.

[Sewer Socialist]

Someone can be a revolutionary... but that doesn't mean they are a revolutionary.

I don't think I could demonstrate your abtrusiveness anymore than what you just said.

And why do you assume that revolutionaries who use money are capable of understanding that it will not be used, post-revolution, and not allowing for the possibility of a married revolutionary who understands their marriage is a circumstance unique to class society?

To get back to the first post (and on-topic), I don't think that movements for assimilation or heteronormativity offer a road to communism, communists should probably work on that instead, and there are plenty of bourgeois movements who are already working on those things. That said, queerdom as a movement, while offering some queer people a space of relative comfort in an abusive world, also often functions primarily as a hip scene, concentrating on fuckability and popularity, to the extent that I do not consider it terribly radical, and to the detriment of those who lack those qualities. It can critique heteronormativity, it can critique cissexism, but without a critique which links them to anti-capitalism, to class society, to communism, it does not function as a radical movement. And for the most part, it fails to do so. It throws some fun dance parties, though.

Did Bash Back do so? I can only find it for sale, nowhere for free. This doesn't seem very revolutionary ;)

[BIXX]

I don't think I could demonstrate your abtrusiveness anymore than what you just said.

And why do you assume that revolutionaries who use money are capable of understanding that it will not be used, post-revolution, and not allowing for the possibility of a married revolutionary who understands their marriage is a circumstance unique to class society?

To get back to the first post (and on-topic), I don't think that movements for assimilation or heteronormativity offer a road to communism, communists should probably work on that instead, and there are plenty of bourgeois movements who are already working on those things. That said, queerdom as a movement, while offering some queer people a space of relative comfort in an abusive world, also often functions primarily as a hip scene, concentrating on fuckability and popularity, to the extent that I do not consider it terribly radical, and to the detriment of those who lack those qualities. It can critique heteronormativity, it can critique cissexism, but without a critique which links them to anti-capitalism, to class society, to communism, it does not function as a radical movement. And for the most part, it fails to do so. It throws some fun dance parties, though.

Did Bash Back do so? I can only find it for sale, nowhere for free. This doesn't seem very revolutionary ;)

The bash back compilation is split up all over the Internet

[Rafiq]

Obviously people who use money are revolutionaries, just like married people and rapists are revolutionaries.

Feral, this is incredibly idiotic. Leftists have this - obnoxious fucking tendency - to get entangled in what would otherwise look like a path to critically understanding something, lazily stop and celebrate the confused conundrums they face, run wild with it as though they have some great revelation.

The stupid logic you're using goes like this: Communists seek to destroy marriage, money and rape, but you can be a revolutionary while being married and while using money. Therefore, you could also be a revolutionary as a rapist.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, what is the obvious, fatally stupid problem with this statement? Simple the money, marriage and rape, while indeed existing in capitalist society, and while indeed understood as not existing in a Communist society, are not equivalences as far as their practical relation to the real existing struggle of Communism. THEY ARE NOT THE SAME.

One cannot be a revolutionary and a rapist in the same way that one cannot be a revolutionary and a Fascist as well (even though both would disappear in Communism). To be a revolutionary, to pledge yourself to the negation of the proletariat, does have certain ramifications about your lifestyle, and it's rather simple: What distinguishes a revolutionary from the non-revolutionary population? This alone implies distinction of consciousness, to be a revolutionary is not to arbitrarily agree with "A stateless, classless society", rather to be a revolutionary is to spiritually devote yourself to Communism insofar as it relates to the general condition of the proletariat.

The problem with lifestylism, in fact, is not that your "private matters" are of no political or ideological concern. Rather, the problem with lifestylism, like political correctness, or privilege theory, is that it entails the following of certain rituals that are not in synchronicity with revolutionary consciousness but the (false) desire to have it (or appear like you have it). That is why practically every lifestyle deemed as "revolutionary" is precisely not revolutionary but the ultimate conformism. If you're a revolutionary, for example, you shouldn't have to think fucking twice about being DISGUSTED by rape, you shouldn't have to ponder about accepting castration before you ever rape someone. If this is not the case, then you are indeed not a revolutionary, but someone who wants to identify as one for whatever reason. 90% of Leftists (quite a modest estimate), in one way or another - probably belong to the latter category. The point is that what sustains you as a revolutionary, what sustains your opposition to the present order of things INEVITABLY implies a hatred of rape, of sexual slavery.

To rape is an inherently political act, through every act of rape does the perpetrator proclaim his allegiance with the class enemy, through every act does the perpetrator sanctify his devotion to the existing order in all its rottenness - for a Communist, for every instance of rape one must feel the humiliation, degradation and torment that the person being raped does, one must understand this not as an isolated instance, but as the universal expression of the same humiliation, degradation and deprivation of being that the ruling order bestows on the proletariat. Rape is precisely NOT some spontaneous act of pure lust alone, it is the mortification of the soul, it is the assertion of their reduction to a sexual commodity, to an object not only of "male desire" but (subsequently) this filthy hypersexual order.

Marriage and money, conversely, are only INHERENTLY to be destroyed in Communism when they are juxtaposed to their super-session. Money is a necessary means of life in capitalist society, not simply of surviving, but participating in modern society. To call for, for example, the abdication of the usage of money, is not only ineffective and mindless, it is a PERVERSION, it entails that - in fact - you do not want what you say you want, Communism, for Communism derives from the conditions of life in capitalism - to abdicate from participating in modern society is therefore to realize a perverse desire that has nothing to do with Communism, but likely a pathological petty bourgeois fantasy.

And marriage, which most working people engage in purely as a matter of their condition of life, is not ONLY SIMPLY oppressive. It is through marriage that people find a sense of belonging, of mutual trust, devotion and commitment to each other. The problem with marriage is NOT that it gives people this sense of comfort, warmth or that it (barely) frees them from the spiritual loneliness and sense of dis-belonging in capitalist society, but that the expression of it is inherently oppressive, that the only means by which one relieves this is through marriage, which is irredeemable as an institution. One can get married for numerous reasons - that you have special devotion towards someone, toward a partner, and you can indeed be a revolutionary while recognizing that forms of social organization in Communism will not necessitate marriage, will not necessitate such islands of comfort in a sea of destitute loneliness.

But this does not hold for rape - there is no logical conclusion of rape through the course of Communist struggle, there is no "replacement" for it, there is no alternative to rape - there is only the strive for its complete annihilation. One can argue that because the qualifications I have provided are so vague, one can just as much say that rape is "also" a means by which certain ills are interpreted in a way that perpetuates structural oppression, like marriage. But the point is simple: Marriage and rape are not equivalences as categories that can be understood separately and thus equally, because the nature of our OPPOSITION to rape, as opposed to marriage, differs. Rape is something that we seek to annihilate in the immediate sense because through our hatred of rape is something universal about sexuality in capitalism attacked. But simply attacking marriage as an institution is rather meaningless - and it's probably this same idiotic thinking which led some to oppose gay marriage on "radical" grounds.

To oppose rape is to oppose something inherent also in marriage. But to simply oppose marriage as a separate category can mean many things - none of which ultimately encapsulate the real nature of sexual relations in capitalism, especially today. And why? Because marriage is largely a legal matter, it is a formality whose abolition can be fought for at the level of policy-making, but the sexual relations (which make it likely) which underlie it are outside the legal, formal domain. So that someone can be married and use money and still be a Communist, does NOT mean that someone can be a rapist (or be religious) and also be a Communist, because the point of distinction here being used is nonsensical - things are not qualified simply because of whether or not they would exist in a future society, but by their PRACTICAL - yes you heard it - relation to the existing struggle and the existing possibility of Communism: What does it mean to be disgusted by rape, verses opposing marriage today? What would it mean for someone to get married, as opposed to someone who would rape? The pathological dimensions which underlie the act of rape cannot exist if one is a Communist. But one can be a Communist and get married for numerous reasons, while not necessarily perpetuating the existence of the existing order VIS A VIS the possibility of Communism. I'll give you an example:

Opposing racism can indeed "perpetuate" aspects of our politically correct, formally anti-racist order. The same goes for Islamism and Fascism. The point is to oppose the perpetuation of the existing order VIS A VIS its supersession, its aufhebeng. But we understand this in a critical, self-conscious manner, and this will only ever mean shit as far as its expression in political struggle. what makes us anti-racists, and what makes the liberals anti-racists will NEVER mean SHIT before this has some practical expression, and the only reason we can understand our differences right now is through acknowledging, for example, where we would differ with liberals in a practical way.

[The Feral Underclass]

I don't think I could demonstrate your abtrusiveness anymore than what you just said.

Abrusiveness isn't a word.

My point is fairly clear. People can say they are a revolutionary and they can act like they are revolutionaries, but that doesn't mean they are one.


And why do you assume that revolutionaries who use money are capable of understanding that it will not be used, post-revolution, and not allowing for the possibility of a married revolutionary who understands their marriage is a circumstance unique to class society?

I don't assume that and I'm sure that lots of people have lots of reasons for why they get married.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

Obviously people who use money are revolutionaries, just like married people and rapists are revolutionaries. But how can someone be a revolutionary if they think money can be part of a communist society, or if marriage and violence against women can be part of a communist society. Someone can be a revolutionary, in the sense that they can say "I am a revolutionary" and they can even argue for a communist society and be in a revolutionary organisation, but that doesn't mean they are a revolutionary. I could say I'm a banana and buy a costume and lay still in a giant bowl, but it wouldn't mean I am a banana.

Hey, I support your fundamental right to be whatever fruit or non-fruit you want to be comrade. I'm no Roman.

[Zoop]

A pretty decent article (Yes it's from the HuffPo, but that doesn't make it a bad article), which cuts to the core of one of the major issues surrounding queer assimilation: the abandonment of the poor and the marginalised queers.

Do any of the wealthy, cis, white queers really give a shit about those left behind in the dirt? I highly doubt it. Instead they just care about their wedding rings and their need to be accepted into societal institutions which marginalise and denigrate all those queers who still suffer, and who always will suffer if these institutions continue to exist, something assimilation contributes to.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/colin-walmsley/the-queers-left-behind-ho_b_7825158.html

[Wolfy]

I hate assimilation, but I think youre confusing equity for assimilation. However I do think we have become worringly less radical and based in assimilation.