darkcalling @ darkcalling @lemmygrad.ml

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5 yr. ago

My thoughts exactly. As Marxists we don't care if you have sex with lots of people, strangers, or like showing off a bit among consenting adults. The problem is the toxic grindset, side-hustle mentality that says you should turn a hobby into a career. Among those who aren't pushed into it by bad economic circumstances there's this odd idea that sex (often specifically masturbation if we're talking cam stuff) should be monetized. This will make the world better these people think for some reason. Monetization of free things has yet to really improve anything but they're sure this time it will. Now I'm a fan of masturbation myself. I think everyone should do it from time to time as needs dictate. What I am not a fan of is turning what should be a nice private moment or an intimate moment with a loved one/romantic partner or an exhilarating act of free love and daring do showing off to strangers into something that's charged for and which you basically do what someone on the other side of the screen tells you to do.

And I have looked into this a little, read a little literature on it. Before a bunch of jerk men started screen-recording and capturing everything and everyone realized that oh shit the internet is forever and others will see this. There was a thriving bit of time where a certain amount of lonely women would show off for lonely men online and everyone had a good time. No money was exchanged, no goods were begged for, no like or subscribe buttons were smashed. It was just good old human horniness and a bit of mutual help between introverts. Strangely, though that died, what arose some years later was the practice of selling yourself in the same format. It arrived just as patreon and other things were springing up and people were tossing their little hobby projects they'd previously freely shared behind paywalls.

Socialism thusly should strive to bring back free love. Abolish gating hobbys behind micro-fees. Encourage sharing, cooperation, and the finer parts of being human that have been taken from us by capitalism.

One last thing, asking active "sex workers" for their input on it is not the end-all-be-all. People deny exploitation all the time. (Hello, where are we? Capitalism)

To go back to the grooming example, victims of pedophiles who have been groomed extensively can spend quite some time in denial despite society shouting at them collectively that it is wrong and despite being in counseling. How long can someone live in denial when society validates their denial and attacks those who question it? Probably their whole life. We live in a system where people deny they are exploited. Patriarchal gas-lighting of women is older, as or more sophisticated than gas-lighting of workers, because it predates capitalism let us remember. It hurts to think of oneself as exploited, it hurts your pride, your sense of self. You want to say, no I chose that, I had power, I wasn't victimized because that's scary. Because for many that makes you feel weak and helpless and awful instead of empowered. Denial.

Women are taught to lie. To not hurt men's feelings so they don't hurt or kill us, to spare boys for the sake of not being labeled nasty, mean, a dog. That includes lying to ourselves. Saying we're okay with something when we're not. Lots of women have stories of only realizing they were sexually assaulted years after the fact because society and their own desire not to have experienced that, not to confront it convince them it didn't happen. Aversion.

Maybe it doesn't always hurt all of these women themselves. But it hurts women as a whole and children, and men. And Marxists are concerned about the whole picture not your fucking individual liberty to do whatever the fuck you want and damn the consequences to society.

When you call for normalizing (not decriminalizing, which is different) prostitution and sexual exploitation through digital means such as cam work you say to young girls, you say to teenage girls "hustle your body". You say to them, their p*ssy has a price tag, you say to them, their tits are their ticket to a new iphone, they just need to find some guys who will buy this product. You say to teen boys that they can fuck the hot girl or at least get videos of her masturbating and saying their name a few times if they make enough money to pay her, that sex, relationships are just a transaction. That these boys need to hustle to afford paying these girls for attention, for sex, for intimacy, for emotional support. What do you think all this does to young men and young women? To kids? And how they interact with the opposite sex going forward in their lives? How they perceive them? And if you can't see how this is a problem I don't know what to say.

It breeds contempt for women and girls. Men no longer see us as equals, as other workers. They see us as things to buy, a pussy to rent, emotional support for pay. I cease to become a person and instead become a commodity. It's not about an intimate, equal, sharing relationship with pleasure for both of us, with emotional labor and support for both of us, it's about paying me off for access to what the man wants.

Have you ever seen the spamming that goes on by "cam workers" on websites to try and try drive traffic to themselves? It's mostly removed on sites like reddit pretty quickly but it's a constant thing going on in the background. These so-called liberated women, these so-called "sex workers" push themselves on men who don't even want to buy, badger them just the same as a woman walking the streets, they call men the f-word, challenge their masculinity, badger them, try and entice them into paying them, plead with them. There is this idea, false that these women are just waiting around passively and all these men come to them and sure some of the bigger ones can perhaps afford to do that, but for the rest they must exploit themselves, they must slap men with patriarchy, they must perpetuate this structure to maximize their take, their income, their profits. Indeed in many cases when they are doing it to stay afloat, to avoid starvation and homelessness to just survive, to get enough to survive. They must indulge in more extreme kinks to stand out, etc.

Women and girls are not allowed to be full people like men. We are the sum of our pretty face, our societally deemed attractive body, our tits, our ass, our sexual organs. We are treated like cars, wrinkles or imperfections like dents on a vehicle that lower its value and drive a discerning owner to trade in for a new one the moment the chance arises. Our emotions, our feelings, our wants, our humanity is denied, rejected.

If sex work is just another form of labor, nothing special, nothing particularly exploitative or fraught about it as you claim then it shouldn't be a big deal for non sex-workers to occasionally do a little, right? It's just another form of low skill labor (yes it can take practice, some knowledge, but so does writing with a pen or typing on a keyboard none of us were born knowing how to do these things and in fact I had a class in elementary school to learn typing). Just as it wouldn't be a big deal for a manager to ask an employee to do some menial task that is not in their job description, move a box of finished product to the lab or front desk, go out and get some more coffee for the coffee machine, it should not be any kind of special or weird matter if that same manager asked his woman employee to give him a blowjob or let him finger her or just heck flash her breasts at him, it won't take more than 20 seconds and it'll really calm him down and help his day or whatever the excuse in vogue for why sex work is needed is. It certainly shouldn't be a big case of sexual harassment if she doesn't want to do it because well it's just labor, he's just asking for some labor. Right? That seems to me to be the world normalizers will to exist. If it's acceptable for women's bodies to be bought, sold, traded, then all are on seen as being on sale. Which leads to more harassment, more entitlement, etc.

I don't think it's a long-term career path which also sets it apart from other forms of labor. For most women once you get beyond your late 20s, early 30s you don't have enough of a customer-base to sustain yourself on as a sole means of income or probably enough to even justify doing it. The exceptions being those who do very extreme, dangerous acts that no one else would do. So the 'industry" incentivizes people being pushed out at a certain age. Even manual physical labor many people can do into their late 40s, 60s even if they stay reasonably in shape and that's another thing, you have to stay in a certain shape to get any reasonable amount of money from men.

It's a pedophilic industry. It preys on youth, uses you during your youth, then spits you out without a goodbye, don't let the door hit you on your way out. It isn't anything to do with skill. In any other industry more senior workers in a given field with more skill and talent have higher positions and income, with this it is the youngest performers for the most part while the old get very little and eventually are forced out.

AI specifically is probably going to blow most of these cam-girls out of the water. Once it can be done cheaply enough and convincingly enough and respond properly to chat prompts and verbal commands which is probably within 6-10 years, some company can spin up a service or invade existing services that charge (without even telling people they're doing it with AI) and just flood the market with very cheap simulacra that unlike real women don't tire of things, that don't balk at extreme or degrading acts, that do whatever the male wants. And to the eyes of men this will be better, because an AI cam-girl can be any combination of pornified personality you'd like plus any combination of hair color, style, breast size, skin color, eye color, and on and on.

The prevalence of sex work is itself a demand created in part by alienation. Under socialism we do not strive to perpetuate alienation, but to abolish it. We strive to have community, togetherness with our fellow workers. And this is division. It will not be needed, it will be seen as an aberration. The worst lie is the one that it is the oldest profession. That is false. It has not always been so and it need not always be so.

Honestly have nothing but contempt for the prostitution aristocracy. If you're doing it to avoid the streets or starving I understand desperation. But glamorizing it, saying it's a great "side hustle" (which itself is a vile phrase and should be a tell because those shouldn't exist), the damage it does in perpetuating the patriarchy, the damage it does to young girls. It makes me weep. Really. I really do cry. It is upsetting that people are saying this is a good thing and valid and should exist forever because you are saying you want girls and women to be second class forever.

Men in the GDR (East Germany) where women had an astonishingly high orgasm rate from sexual encounters were noted to complain they had to put in effort with women, in their relationships, in doing work in the home, chores, etc. That is actually what we want. We want men who have to put in the work for relationships with us. We want a society of boys who do not think they can just buy female attention, affection, and sex but must put in work to us, for us, with us. Together.

First off I'm not saying it needs to stop existing right now, we exist under capitalism. It cannot be abolished as long as capitalism reigns. However I am saying under socialism it WILL be abolished. We will not ask permission. We will give the victims resources, housing, food, stability, education, jobs. We will give those who try to do so in spite of that counseling, group therapy, theory lessons, re-education. Those who a third time in a situation where their material needs are met, where they have opportunities, where they've been given re-education and therapy choose to attempt to perpetuate it under that system however will get the iron fist. It will be merciless. As we are merciless as revolutionaries in our drive to abolish the old superstructure, to bring about a better world for all our children but especially in this context our daughters.

To address the question: There can be no consent under the influence of patriarchal liberal capitalism in which we live. Consent is born of ability to make a rational judgement informed by the full facts and with a real choice of options not compromised by external pressures.

Now, just as many pedophiles groom their victims, society grooms women and girls from a young age. A pedophile grooming an underage victim is one person that usually spends months to a couple years at most. Society grooms and indoctrinates girls from birth, years, not one person, the media, people all around them, including often their parents, siblings, their female friends as they grow up, their male friends as they grow up, etc. And it is a proven system, it's a set of shackles that has refined itself with help from society for centuries, a thousand years. It is clever, insidious, pervasive, and it invades the psychology of every girl and woman alive so despite us also being the victims we also often perpetuate it and enforce it on ourselves, on other women, on men.

Besides consent is secondary. That's a liberal, libertarian take, that says as long as both parties consent it's okay. Well I can find two parties that consent to overthrowing the revolution and coordinating a fascist party, but guess what? Vanguard party gets a fucking veto on things harmful to the revolution, the proletariat body, etc. Individual centered, selfish thinking.

The people themselves are saying it someone claims. Well in my previous response I pointed out what if theoretically you had a thriving industry of gay and trans people who were paid to give speeches at churches and spread homophobia and transphobia, flagellate themselves. I'm sure you could find among those doing that those who'd say wait a second, this gives me good money, it's not hard work, I enjoy it better than working in factory, why won't you let me do this when I say it's consensual. And the reason why is just as that person is spreading homophobia and enabling bigots, disharmony among the working class, division, crude hatreds. So too are women who "choose" to prostitute themselves and say they consent and enjoy it harming all women. Not just women but girls, children.

Another example, if slavery had evolved to have a class of paid, even very well paid, labor aristocracy, making the big bucks, black people who whipped and kept black slaves in line for white people, you would have those people with their perverse incentive to maintain the structure they profit off of without consideration to the victims and what they're actually doing who would speak out against abolishing slavery because it would hurt their livelihood.

See this is what is so insidious about patriarchy. It makes women oppress themselves, participate in it yet we're blind to it. It is a more complex form of slavery, it's mental slavery and bondage, it is the Matrix and a large amount of women have been convinced that they're not shackled, or that the shackles are good for them, that they need them, that it is the natural order. Or they have warped perceptions of what liberation looks like, they think how emancipated they are by commodifying themselves instead of just giving themselves to a husband or boyfriend (or doing both, commodifying themselves and their partner). Feminism itself has been hijacked to serve the capitalist system. Liberal platitudes and nonsense are offered up. We're told how empowering it is to be paid to masturbate on camera to men who tell us how they'd like to choke us or fuck us in ways that hurt us. We're told how empowering it is to profit off the alienation and isolation of men who are also victims of capitalism and patriarchy and are also kept in a certain role and misery by it. And how empowering it is to perpetuate that.

This reply didn't quite hit right. I was tired, a bit vexed, a little dazed and confused. I posted a revised version of this at the bottom of my comment chain.

Yes: https://www.hawley.senate.gov/senate-passes-hawley-resolution-condemning-antisemitism-college-campuses

Thursday, October 26, 2023

Today the U.S. Senate passed by voice vote U.S. Senator Josh Hawley's resolution condemning Hamas and the antisemitic student groups on college campuses that have celebrated the Oct. 7 terrorist attack against Israel. The passage of the resolution came after Democrats blocked the measure one week ago.

You were banned for support of what Reddit (and maybe US law) considers a terrorist organization. There is zero flexibility here and they probably reported you to the government as well.

As far as I know only material support of designated orgs is a crime but they have been pushing increasingly for social media to clamp down on “misinformation” and most social media has been happy to oblige as advertisers don’t like perceived extremism either.

I said it some months back but I’ll repeat that with the cracks of empire showing they’re going to clamp down much harder on any dissent.

Philosopher. Has written on things like states of emergency hence why it would be his nightmare.

What are you talking about? Posting is my job. Xi mostly pays for dunks and spreading propaganda but I can usually pad my numbers out with some other things and they don't notice and pay just the same.

First off: OP of course can do what they want with their screenshots. And I understand if the poster is in fact someone OP knows and not wanting to so easily lead people back to their own twitter presence. But let's not censor ourselves needlessly based off fears that have no basis in reality.

However, it's a pretty white area. There is no meaningful legal liability from reposting publicly available, consensually posted content that has no copyright and iron-clad fair-use arguments for the purpose of comment, parody, educational use, etc. Effectively zero risk anywhere in the west to screenshot and comment on something posted publicly online (outside of stuff that breaks national security laws, grave intellectual property violations (think posting the coco-cola secret recipe level stuff), and child sexual abuse imagery) as it's widely understood posting online in public is doing so in an open forum and inviting this kind of response. It's only if the commenting, opinions, sentiment, speech itself violates the law that you have a problem and then it has nothing to do with not censoring or anonymizing names.

Once you've accepted the risk of non-pre-screened user-submitted content such as pictures, text, you're already putting yourself in as hot of water as you end up in by allowing usernames to be present. I mean lots of reddit subs and other places used to straight up drop doxx posts on people connecting their online identities together and back to their real life ones, I saw a few on cth back in the day about prolific annoyances and I never heard of anyone dragged into court over that.

The key to avoiding liability is timely good faith removal of potentially infringing content upon receiving a valid legal request. It's only persistent, flagrant, heavily repeated, demonstrably willful violations over long periods of time that have in the past successfully created liability. The biggest examples of successful online lawsuits I can think of include the gawker one which had to do with spreading revenge porn essentially and continually harassing a guy and not backing down when asked. There were numerous off-ramps that if gawker had backed down earlier they would have survived even a high-powered lawsuit like that. You really cannot get got for this stuff without being warned and ignoring the warnings.

I mean half of social media is reposting content you don't own from others. We live in a society where random jerks with a camera can go around in public, get up in people's faces with a camera, insult them, antagonize them, harass the shit out of them for views and clicks and there's little that can be done with someone doing that for antagonism under the guise of "social experiment" while harassing and plastering someone's face and name all over. I mean if this were a legal issue the web would look a lot different.

Now, you can potentially, hypothetically get in hot water if people on your website organize harassment and break laws to do so but that has nothing to do with showing usernames and importantly pretty much has to be a continued pattern of harassment and inaction after repeated notice. If people are saying "PM me for their info" and you're allowing it as people talk about harassment, bomb threats, whatever, then you could be in trouble censored names or no. But just showing something someone else voluntarily posted to a public space online? Nah. And we don't I think have a problem with users here harassing people to my knowledge even in an internet bullying way (correct me if I'm wrong of course). So the solution is not allowing a culture where people accept that, fostering one where people cry fed-posting and report such things before they can go anywhere and be used as evidence of anything.

I'd be far more worried about the potential for all the "in minecraft" comments that I sometimes see than anything near this. Like the Palestinian situation has people heated and I've seen some stuff that really makes me worry for the person posting it because of the heat they could bring on themselves.

Now if the people in the screenshots were breaking laws or in danger from the security state by spreading around what they'd been exposing or saying, or if their words could be construed as slander, there's an argument there. It doesn't apply here but there is one. That said, doing that won't protect most people who break serious laws, they need good opsec in the first place.

Relevant related reading: Western Marxism, the Fetish for Defeat.

Of course this isn't just relegated to Marxism though the article focuses on it. There is broadly across the west this myth of peaceful resistance, of the noble peaceful resistor, of the noble martyr whose death brought about change without ever lowering or debasing themselves to shedding blood or engaging in violence themselves. This broadly connects back to the Christ mythos, Christ a figure who was martyred so the Christian religion says to save all of humanity. He died nobly we are told because he did not call upon all the powers of heaven to smite the oppressors, because even in his dying throes of agony he screamed "father forgive them" to stall the wrath of heaven. And through his glorious, noble, peaceful, pacifist sacrifice we are told all may have eternal life through belief rather than perishing.

So the west is very obsessed with this idea and it stems from I believe this and of course is actually propagated in school teaching and so on with figures like MLK and Ghandi because it supports the hegemonic domination of the west, the submission of the proletariat, perpetuates ineffectual tactics which are handily beaten down with laughs and hands the participants trophies while regaling them with revisionist tales of how it didn't work this time but it did this other time as long as you ignore all the violence and other pressures that actually led to the victory falsely claimed in the name of non-violent, peaceful, and non-disruptive protest.

It really depends on the terms of the loss. There’s the potential for stabbed in the back anger from the Nazis there that turns violent against Western Europe, there’s also the possibility that’s avoided and instead they conduct decades of terrorist attacks against Russia with the west’s continued support.

I’m somewhat doubtful Zelensky will be reasonable, so Russia may have to choose between a costly offensive that takes Kiev and chases the government to the west while degrading it or a frozen conflict with Donbas and other newly Russian regions under Russian control but disputed and not recognized as such in the west or by Ukraine. Because Zelensky knows he’ll have a chopper and a plane waiting for him even if Kiev falls whereas if he negotiates the Nazis there or the CIA will kill him.

We’re already seeing fascists in the European Union and NATO calling for more expansion eastward and calling it imperative and a necessity. So I suspect color revolution attempts in CIS countries like Georgia, the -stans. They’ve already pulled shit in Armenia. The goal being to distract and overcome Russia by pushing up to their borders in too many places for them to militarily defend at once with their limited troops.

Long-term I think they want enlargement to indoctrinate the peoples there with anti-Russia sentiment and eventually throw them into a grand conflict with Russia to cause enough internal trouble, instability and profit loss to allow a coup to replace Putin with someone more pliant to the west. They’re not giving up, there are degrees of success for the US and though Ukraine hasn’t succeeded as much as they hoped they’ve in some way’s strengthened their hand by pulling Europe inescapably into their orbit it seems (reactionary populism though could undo that in the next decade or two).

Edit The west is very guileful, very dangerous. They suspect they're not strong enough to pin and hold down Russia and China, let alone defeat them. So instead they implement a short-medium-term plan to create armies against Russia, to put down propaganda and create a sea of hostility around them that can be used to pin them while leaving all of the imperial core and NATO resources free to go after China. They are not bad strategists.

If by socialist policies you mean ruled by a communist party then hell yes. It would be a dream come true to live in for example China.

Genzedong on Reddit is also sadly being infiltrated by reactionaries though they aren’t making posts just comments and upvoting each other while downvoting Marxists. Unlike Juche gang though GZD is well and pretty much dead with maybe a post a day.

IMO thought should be given to whether it doesn’t make more sense to lock certain low volume subs and direct people to come to lemmy.

No unity with the distorters of Marxism. Down with them.

Feds don’t give a fuck about you having anti-capitalist thoughts or feelings. They care about real threats. Ergo it is in their direct interest and past playbooks to divert people down false paths, into Maoism, into Anarchism, into Trotskyism, even into Pat-Soc-ism. All of these are effectively anti-communists with a veneer or being progressive and anti-capitalist. It allows them to put wolves in sheep’s clothing among the workers to wreck, divert, instigate and direct most people back to supporting or being ambivalent about US imperialism and policy and being therefore ineffective at addressing capitalism or weakening it.

See, I look at this and then I look at crying liberals (including many so-called leftists) talking about how Trump winning again will bring mask off fascism or whatever to the US and for that reason they claim Biden/Kamala has to win again.

And well uh it’s here, the Dems are bringing it, and this is the type of proof you should rub their noses in (not that they’ll care because fascism is when support whatever countries US State dept deems authoritarian in their addled heads).

It’s an imitation of liberals. Caitlin is one of the more prominent social media anti-imperialists.

Passive voice. Very big propaganda tell once you know it.

No idea. I’d personally rip it with YT-DLP with subs and put it on plex or similar but if you don’t have such a setup that may be more work than it’s worth.

YouTube used to have the whole thing. Let me check my bookmarks and get back to you.

edit: And here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A74YChOkSpY&list=PLJpCdaWK6PVpeWbeUSjw4dBWt5IKK5Buj&index=1

Not sure if it's the whole thing but it's many, many episodes with English subtitles.