DroneRights

Five friends pile into a station wagon on their way to LA. An hour into the journey, the person in middle back yells at the driver for being gay, because they heard gays are slow drivers. Right back and passenger seat are very concerned that this might slow down the journey, so they tell the driver to pull over and debate the issue. Six hours later, the group comes to a consensus: gay people probably aren't slow drivers, but the gay person is going to have to swap with left back just to assuage middle back's fears.

Left back (now the driver) is a vegan. Two hours later, middle back says vegans are slow drivers.

we’re all leftists here

Left and right are relative, not absolute. Americans think that Joe Biden is a leftist because they're all the way on the right. Norwegians think that social democrats are on the left because they're on the moderate right. Hardcore communists think that demsocs are on the right, and some neo Nazis would think Reagan was a leftist if they met him.

I'm further left than the average Hexbear user, so from my point of view the MLs and anarchists who don't understand far left theory are centrists. They're further right than me, but I'm willing to compromise and accept those people as being "in the middle".

Yeah, I am acting in good faith. And I do appreciate the open mindedness and support from mods. I've seen people come to understand my gender and neurotype and that's awesome. So I would characterise a lot of the people who initially reacted with hostility as well meaning liberals. Whereas the leftists who already had an education on xenogenders accepted me instantly, like that one angelgender person.

But I have a whole lot experience of denialism of my gender identity, and since I don't expect anyone here to have been in the same subreddits or discord servers or local orgs as I have and seen this for themselves, talking about through-lines that I've seen here is the best way to make my claims verifiable for others and prove I know what I'm talking about and I'm talking about it in good faith. So I talk about the realist bigotry here as a case study to help others understand the rest of my life. And the bottom line is: people who put reality above feelings are cruel to trans people. Trans "allies" who have been convinced reality is compatible with binary trans people are usually still enbyphobic. It's only the nonrealists who act with true acceptance. Because I will always have to justify my existence to realists, and even if science and kindness are on my side, it'll still be a struggle to get them to open their minds for the next marginalised experience

I wish that was true. If liberals weren't such huge realists they'd be less transphobic. I mean, I've even taken transphobia from liberals on Hexbear who had a problem with my gender for being incompatible with reality. Realists always act like that. If mainstream liberals were idealists, it wouldn't have taken until last week for me to be open about my gender on a public site. I wouldn't be scared of them doing hate crimes at me for being unreal.

But I understand all of those things without materalism. I understand history and science and labour relations as products of the human mind, and I can apply discoveries of the scientific method to make accurate predictions about the perceptual world. And I understand why people adopt certain positions in relation to class struggle and how they're related to the perceived world. No materialism needed.

Yeah, I used to agree with marxists on all that when I was a baby commie, but then I got radicalised further to the left and I no longer believe in a material reality essential to cognition or perception. And I don't see how agreeing with Marx on all that is necessary to maintain a belief in communism. I'm sure it's helpful if you're already a realist and you need a realist reason to become a communist, but I don't think it's useful at all for idealists. That's my synthesis between what the realists said and what I said.

I knew what historical materialism meant, just didn't see what it had to do with communism other than Marx believed in it. I don't really understand Marx's thinking in associating the two, but this thread is helping. It seems like y'all are already materialists and just need a material analysis of class because you're not ready to understand the big stuff.

No, I do understand everything you just said, I just think it's wrong and that a properly communist analysis would demonstrate that. Are you telling me that historical materialism is just one of multiple ways of arriving at communist conclusions?

Well I sure disagree with everything you just said. I think it's reductive, simplistic, and appeals to problematic realist sensitivities. What does everything you just said have to do with communism?

Misogynists have historically held more institutional power than women. We had a time when women knew how to speak inclusively and misogynists didn't, it was called the 1960s. It sucked.

Correcting a misogynist is more likely to provoke a visible reaction than ignoring problematic speech. If it isn't corrected, it becomes normal.

The design of Prey was like an alternate reality

That's because it is! If you read the magazines laying around, you'll see that the cold war never happened in the world of Prey. America and Russia reached for the stars together, and the Vietnam war never happened.