Is that Kevin Costner?

Not a Russia expert by any means but this is how I understand the situation:

• The Eastern Orthodox Church gained influence after the fall of the USSR and used it to spread anti-LGBT sentiment
• Russian leadership are conservative reactionaries and the KPRF, the largest opposition party (and only nominally communist), is also quite reactionary
• Due to the way the US weaponizes the concept of human rights, being anti-queer is seen as being anti-imperialist in many countries outside the West, including Russia

I had another point that I forgot while I was typing this up because I’m trying to function on 3 hours sleep lol. If I remember it I’ll update

Capitalists love to use floating signifiers to galvanize reactionaries of different stripes

Sorry gonna semi-hijack this thread to go off about tubal ligation (sterilization for someone with a uterus) in the US.

Although the ACA requires insurance plans to cover tubal ligation, 18 states allow providers to set their own policies and these policies can be used to prevent access. Specifically for white cis women, they will deny the procedure for being childless or having “only” one child, being unmarried (to a cis man), or being deemed too young. Even if they’re married, doctors will sometimes demand their husband’s approval. And even if none of these conditionals apply, the provider might add additional hurdles like needing a psychologist’s approval. And of course, there’s the “religious objection” card to be played at any time. 1 in 7 people in the US get care from a hospital aligned with the Catholic Church, so that’s a lot of religious control over women’s bodies.

Now if we’re talking about BIPOC cis woman, especially those in poverty, incarceration, or other precarious situations, the system will trip over itself to find reasons to forcibly sterilize them. Also any woman who are disabled or have autism have no trouble whatsoever getting sterilized if they ask.

I wonder why there are so many barriers for white, allistic, able-bodied women to get sterilized and so easy to do for all other women. What a mystery.

Oh hey I made this

Yeah about that… I’m also from the US and poor and my partner is disabled. We’ve looked into emigrating to China, and unfortunately the chance of success is basically zero for your average person.

There are only a few ways to become a permanent resident of China (that I’m aware of):

1. Be the spouse of a Chinese national
2. Have permanent employment in China
3. Be a dependent of a Chinese citizen/perm. resident
4. Be an investor

Out of these, #1 is the most feasible for your average person. Of course, there could be a quite few ethical problems in this scenario depending on how it plays out.

#2 requires the person to be deemed highly-specialized and irreplaceable in their sponsored work visa job in order to be considered for permanent employment. These are usually tech, engineering, etc. Basically specialized jobs that are in demand in the US will likely also be in demand in China.

#3 doesn’t apply.

For #4, I think the minimum investment is $500k USD. So that’s a no go for most people.

And on top of this, you have to provide your medical record and I’m not sure how a disability would affect your ability to become a resident.

And of course, in all these cases, this only applies to you personally. I’m not sure if there is a feasible way for your grandparents to emigrate to China.

Also, most of this is pretty similar to most countries I’ve looked into so you’ll continually run into the same problems. I’ve more or less resigned myself to my fate in this fascist shithole.

That is my hope

I think most communists agree that the porn industry itself is deeply exploitative, but I’ve read many studies that suggest that porn consumption has negative impacts on the consumer as well. I’ve picked out a few to consider below. Note that most of these studies are focused exclusively on cishet relationships and the most commonly consumed types of porn (i.e. mainstream porn). Meaning that queer porn and ethical porn are not considered here.

Porn use can be bad for your health

• Adolescent porn use contributes to spread of sexual misinformation (Source)
• Porn users, compared to non-users, reported greater depressive symptoms, poorer quality of life, more mental‐ and physical‐health diminished days, and lower health status (Source)
• Frequent porn use in het women correlates with insecurities in appearance and less sexual enjoyment (Source)
• With fMRI, porn has been observed to be addictive in ways similar to gambling and substance addictions (Source)
• Other evidence that porn can be addictive (1) (2) (3) (4)

Porn use has negative impacts on relationships

• Porn consumption is correlated to sexual dysfunction in both men and women (1) (2)
• Regardless of marital status, porn use was either associated neutrally or negatively associated with nearly all relationship outcomes, with virtually no positive associations (Source)
• Separation is more than twice as likely for married Americans that viewed porn as those who did not, even after marital happiness, sexual satisfaction and sociodemographic controls (Source)
• Porn users are more likely to experience loneliness (Source)

Porn promotes sexual aggression and violence

• Porn use linked to increased frequency of sexual choking (Source)
• Frequent porn consumption is linked to predatory sexual behavior in high school males (Source)
• Frequent porn consumption associated with adolescent male willingness to forward sexts (Source)
• 1 in 12 people in the US have been the victim of revenge porn. Women are more likely to be the victim, men the perpetrator (Source)
• Exposure to pornography and perceiving it as realistic associated with increases sexual aggression risk (Source)
• From a sample of 4009 heterosexual videos on Pornhub, 45% contain some form of physical aggression. 97% of the targets of aggression were women who were portrayed to have positive or neutral response (Source)
• Porn consumption is correlated with sexual aggressive behavior, both as aggressors and targets. Women and men who have sex with men have higher report rates of being targets (Source)
• Association between porn use and sexual aggression are significant; meta-analysis (Source)

Porn can be dehumanizing:

• Men with frequent porn use are more likely to engage in mechanistic and animalistic dehumanization of woman (Source)
• Incel and pornography languages are strikingly similar (Source)
• Most porn consumers do not care about performer mistreatment (Source)
• Porn perpetuates racist stereotypes (Source)

Will all the negative consequences of porn dissipate with the abolition of porn as an industry in a socialist society that continues to permit porn? Instant access to near limitless porn is unprecedented. We are only now scratching the surface on research as to the consequences. I think this is something that will need to be studied and monitored even after transition into socialism. Addiction possibilities and strong links to sexual aggression are especially worrisome to me, and I have concerns that porn may continue to reinforce stereotypes and set unrealistic expectations even within a socialist state.

POV when today’s the day you decided to join Lemmygrad