To imply that abortion is the cure for poverty or that not having access to it is the cause is indeed false and a typical liberal refusal to look at the broader systems. But to deny how much unwanted pregnancy, along with the health risks and increased mortality rate that come with it, the burden on poor communities to provide adequate care for children when they are already overworked, etc, all contribute to and worsen poverty is absurd, and just as much a failure to recognize material reality.

Liberals and even well meaning progressives will sometimes fall into the trap of pitching abortion and birth control as a part of the solution to poverty.

But access to abortion and BC does help alleviate poverty. When women are unable to choose to not have unwanted pregnancies and children, it does create a serious strain on them and their community, exacerbating poverty and everything associated with it. That isn't some idealist liberal delusion, it's very well documented reality.

Edit, adding:

I honestly think if birth control was only available for colored people then conservatives wouldn't have a problem with it. Abortion too

It's just the opposite. One of the main reasons reactionaries tend to be so anti-abortion is because forcing women to have unwanted children helps to perpetuate poverty, locking communities into a cycle of impoverishment they can't escape. Meanwhile, those who are rich and white have access to abortions whether they're illegal or not, which is by design. If a rich old gammon-chud's daughter gets pregnant and she doesn't want to keep it, he's likely to help her quietly get an abortion even as he ensures people of color never have that kind of opportunity. Wealthy white people want (and generally have) the freedom to do whatever they want while they simultaneously limiting the freedoms of poor BIPOC people, all to maintain or strengthen the white supremacist system.

There are links to alternative front ends in a comment below. Also, old.reddit is working OK for me without needing to login. You're right, NSFW old.reddit is requiring login now.

There might be a few outside of here that know it, but they write essays about how George actually must have meant it to be the other way around to reassure themselves.

China has recently made positive strides on a number of issues like LGBTQ rights, so there's no reason not to hope they can also start moving in the correct direction when it comes to phasing out animal cruelty and meat consumption as well, as they continue to economically surpass the reactionary west. Their dedication to addressing climate change will also at some point demand the recognition that using animals as a major source of food is unsustainable.

Wait, what's worse? For who? I'm not totally sure what you're saying here but as someone who has survived by doing sex work, who has been repeatedly sexually exploited*, and who has also been more than what I think most would just call exploited, I would not say that any of that was worse for me than being murdered on a factory farm. Can we just agree that exploitation and the objectification or commodification of sentient life is very bad and needs to be abolished?

*(Side note to make clear that sex work is not inherently exploitational either but that's a different ball of wax.)

Part of what's funny about the video is that he was trying to showcase a software update Tesla released, the purpose of which was specifically for making it safe to close the trunk on your fingers. He tests it with a cucumber and banana and it actually looks reasonably safe but then he does the test with his finger. Not only does the test fail but the trunk won't open so he's stuck there shocked in obvious pain and can't get his finger back out.

It doesn't actually break but he shows it afterward and it's clearly smashed with bruises and a decent sized cut from the trunk's edge. He comes back and has some excuse from tesla about it being because he tested with veggies first and the software thought he was trying to shut it with something blocking it because of the previous repeated attempts. He actually starts to test it again with his finger saying "This time it should hurt way less..." but he can't do it, he keeps pulling back right before it closes in what I might have said was finally a tiny bit of sense, only it's an instinctive reaction and he can't help it. He concludes that we'll just have to trust it from the last banana test.

Here it is if anyone wants to watch: www.youtube.com/watch?v=rA55B1kobnw

Nah, contrary to the belief of some weirdos, poking fun at people for their supernatural woo idealism is providing a positive service.

Incredibly hurtful? Cowardly? Come on. That's the same as a chud crying about being pasted in a bad light onto a wojak comic. It's a dumb meme, you should be happy your pfp made it onto one that someone made for a niche leftist website to chuckle at. I have seen you tear into liberals for their bullshit beliefs (which I enjoyed watching), and I wouldn't have expected you'd be so weirdly sensitive to being on the other side of that equation. I think most here would take this as being barely more than a comradely joshing. You weren't even the prime character in it, your pfp (pfp for christ sakes!) was pasted over the microphone of the original pic. But given all that, the fact you got this twisted up about it makes me feel like it was all the more a good thing to do. You should take this as an opportunity to examine why you did find something so mild as this "incredibly hurtful" but more importantly why your fellow communists would be jokingly comparing you to the current poster child for woo lunacy.

As for what is comparable, well you both believe in nonsense woo that would make many spirit crystal chiropractors blush and you both have come up with absurd justifications for it. You have this strange fixation that I was calling you a zionist when it was pretty clear that had nothing to do with it, and the comparison was around the nutty unsubstantiated beliefs. In fact I didn't know the other person in the picture even was a zionist, but I did know she uses her "spiritualism" as a justification for the dippy new-age version of white supremacy. I think you just focus on the zionism part because you're mad at me for making a mediocre niche meme picture and you saying that I'm calling you a zionist is a way to try to lash out. But nah, I wasn't calling you a zionist, I was calling you a nut. So please enough with the hyperfixation on zionism. By putting your pfp next to a picture of her, I didn't call you a zionist any more than I called you someone who appropriates black culture by wearing dreadlocks, and I think you actually know that.

You happen to be lucky in that despite adamantly believing in wacky things that there is zero proof for and has been demonstrably proven false, you still arrived at the correct conclusions about politics, capitalism, imperialism etc., which I think most here would agree is by far what's important. But again, I think you got there in spite of having some massive brainworms about the supernatural. Having wacky batty woo beliefs isn't a crime but it is one hundred percent on the table fair game to be made fun of, and it needs to be. Because uncritical belief in magic is not something that should be present in a healthy society, the society that we as communists and materialists should aim for, where we examine reality with a scientific mindset to come as close as we can to modeling reality instead of making up just-so stories that fit our conception of how we wish things were instead of how they are. It is only through brutal honesty with ourselves and how the world works (as opposed to how we wish it worked, like with magic telekinetic, telepathic or prophetic powers) that we can find the way towards true human flourishing. Going the route of ghosts, demons, telekinesis, astral projection, crystal powers, star seeds, or whatever, it's all different facets of the same bunkum and it is anathema to a materialist conception of reality (in whatever way you want to define materialism, strictly Marxist, more broadly philosophical, but any meaningful definition of materialism).

This Shanin person (who tbh I didn't know existed until the thread here about her and that chud singer) has also followed this path of going down the rabbit hole of unsubstantiated spiritualist nonsense that "makes sense to her" despite all these things she believes being obvious, provable bullshit. She arrived at much more odious conclusions about people and supremacy, and that's not surprising. I know the concept of the "slippery slope" is often abused, but in this case it's very fitting and actually happens a lot. I've watched it happen with people, the new age woo to white supremacy pipeline. It's not uncommon that it is tangential to Joe Rogan. It's not always a bad trajectory, but it often is. When you start believing in this kind of antiscience wishful thinking, you can follow it to all sorts of conclusions, literally anything imaginable, including the truly horrible and antihuman. I think of the esoteric alien origins horseshit that many of the inner core nazis made foundational to their beliefs. I think about the batshit mormon beliefs that were based on the whims of a known charlatan con artist, and how interwoven all of that became with the white supremacist "security" apparatus of the US, the most evil organizations that ever existed. Magic underwear is innocuous and even funny, but it's part of a sort of larger complex of beliefs, a structure founded on woo supernatural mysticism, self referential and self reinforcing, that is used to justify some of the most heinous crimes. A failure of critical thinking, which in my opinion is a form of a failure of self crit, is dangerous in the long run, and belief in magic is without a doubt a failure of critical thinking.

There, does that meet your criteria for being "said it to your face"? I don't see how anything else I posted before wasn't saying it to your face. I don't even know what subtweeting is, as I fortunately never got sucked into that brand of social media. But stop implying I was doing something underhanded or sneaky. That's absurd. I made a dumb meme pic and posted it where you and anyone else could see. Just like with the zionism thing (that didn't happen) you keep twisting me into this strange caricature that has nothing to do with... well, anything, and assigning to me these nonsensical intentions that simply aren't there. It's weird, comrade! Don't do that! Now, if you want to take my pfp and paste it to compare me to some scientism nerd like ND Tyson, or even a bigger asshole like Dick Dawkins, that would be a fair reciprocal and I'd have to laugh even. But I wouldn't suddenly think you were, for example, accusing me of SA just because they were (I think?) I definitely wouldn't come back and call you a coward and make up all these off the wall accusations about your intentions.

Whatever though. I feel like I've said my piece and I'm pretty sure also answered your questions, mostly by trying to straighten out the misconceptions about me you glomed onto. I know this was long, but that's mostly because I think you're still a decent poster and commie, so I'm taking the time to lay it out there. If you were just some random chud which I'd assume you were if this thread was all I'd ever seen you post, I'd roll my eyes, PPB you and move on. Even though the hostility you assumed I had wasn't there in my original image post nor this comment, I do feel like your response with demands of posting "to your face" and calling me cowardly, etc. really was hostile. And I don't like that. So this is the end of the conversation at my end. I expect you'll respond, and I hope it is about things I actually said this time. But I won't know. Tomorrow is my scheduled day to touch grass and be away from the internet entirely, and I won't be touching this pile of internet drama with a ten meter pole. Again, I've said my piece, I went into great detail specifically to answer your hostile questioning, now I'm disengaging.

What are you talking about, no they aren't. Besides, when did it become not ok on hexbear to treat harmful and false ideas with the condescension and disdain they deserve? You do know about the Posting Policy Bulletin at the bottom of every hexbear page, I hope. Also, telling someone to relax is pretty condescending, just fyi.

I think Gaia answered that question pretty well in the affirmative, as have countless communist sex workers before her, that yes, it absolutely can and does help people, including women. Anyone who says otherwise is discounting the voices of women and comrades. That doesn't mean there aren't terrible examples of exploitation in the sex industry and that it isn't dominated by power imbalance. But so too are there terrible examples of exploitation and abuse in most other low wage work. From miners to service industry workers. Sex work is work, and it doesn't deserve scorn or disdain any more than any other form of work. As communists, this should not be a difficult concept to grasp, but unfortunately patriarchal, reactionary brainworms still infect a not insubstantial subset in some leftist spaces.

You have absolutely nothing to be ashamed of, and it's disgusting that bigoted prudes like JucheBot1988 worm their way into ML (or general leftist) movements and instigate this kind of unnecessary shame. You are a worker, you have every right to be proud of the real work you do, and there is nothing wrong, certainly nothing shameful, about enjoying your work to whatever degree you do. Just as all workers, sex workers can both find enjoyment in their work and rightfully lament the ways in which that work is exploited under capitalism. And like any other form of work, there is nothing inherently exploitative about sex work itself, but again, only how it operates under the capitalist mode. I'm sure I'm not telling you anything you don't already know, but personally, I find that these kind of reassurances and solidarity from comrades can go a long ways in reminding me that I also have nothing to be ashamed of with respect to my own past work. Especially when sexist SWERFs start going off on their slimy tirades.

Please do not listen to fools like JucheBot1988. They have an agenda, and it's gross, but that doesn't mean you (or anyone reading) need to take their reactionary bile to heart. Notice how they weaseled their pet issue prudery into a completely unrelated post, and the outright sexist implication that women are incapable of enjoying expressing their sexuality online. lol. It really is laughable, actually. They have some weird fucking issues, but do not let that effect you or cause you to feel any shame whatsoever. They're no more worth listening to than chud transphobes and racists are.

Meanwhile most of us, certainly myself, only want to express solidarity, empathy, and compassion for our fellow workers like you.

Not a bad post except for that you just had to throw in some sexist SWERF garbage in #7.

Age of consent is inherently a different issue than cousin marriage. You know, because of the whole consent thing which is right there in the term.

I don't fuck my cousin and I have no desire to, but I also have no problem with people who do, so long as it's consensual. I'd say the dweebs here are the ones who can't see past their own bias, a bias which apparently exists mostly due to the same eugenicist bullshit they rightly despise.

Thank you for extra information. If you're the person I think you are, then I felt like the scrubbing of all your old comments/posts was a big loss to the collective information and wisdom that can be found by digging through hexbear. I rolled my eyes at the foolish decision to remove your informative comment here in this thread. I mean, agree or not, it's great having an actual Chinese perspective, and then to see it get deleted on a pro-China thread as "ultraleftism" was very funny. But it was a gutpunch when I saw you had deleted all the comments on your old account! Keep posting, comrade, some of us really do appreciate it.

The banning of this user is extreme liberalism. Did nothing wrong. Would be my nomination for number 2 otherwise.

Here we have a 4-day old account listing off the obvious cool regulars and the hexbear mainstays, but then touting a banned user who bordered on wreckerism and who repeatedly violated site-wide rules, comm rules, picked unnecessary fights with comrades, used handfuls of alts to try to evade their ban, and did a bunch of other shit I won't list here. But their banning was "liberalism" and they "did nothing wrong." Very sus.

Link to the thread: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskIreland/comments/17jyi5j/thoughts_on_irish_people_joining_the_british_army/k74mucl/?context=3

The confidence these imbeciles have as they spew their revised versions of history to fit their bullshit worldview makes my blood boil.

God, have to agree with that other commenter - truly pathetic. Take a break from being a champion of justice on Reddit, it’s really warping your sense of reality

Pathetic, legitimately on the level of holocaust denial

You’re out here denying well documented atrocities, kinda ironic.

Bud, don’t be ignorant of actual facts. Costs nothing to enlighten yourself.

FINALLY.

About goddamn time. Better late than never (I mean fucking obviously, I just wish it had been decades or even a century sooner).

I hope he died knowing that the empire he spent his life orchestrating atrocities for is also spiraling the drain.

🦀 all x 1000.