ngl russia is not making it easy to give critical support lol

  • BynarsAreOk [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    9 months ago

    Did any of you actualy read the stupid article?

    A video shared by ultra-conservative bloggers showed an unidentified man threatening to turn the pair into the police for wearing a Ukrainian flag pin and rainbow earrings.

    Yeah, I’ll just casually wear western values AND a flag pin of our current mortal enemies in time of war and expect nothing will happen?

    Did nobody actually watch the video? Is it because its telegram or what lol? The person is actually literaly wearing a Ukrainian flag pin. Whether or not she had any LGBTQ symbol or not is not the only point, heck I’m pretty sure nothing would have happened without this galaxy brain decision to wear an Ukrainian flag.

    But it gets worse

    “Also, during the process, the earrings themselves were examined, and it was found that they have the shape of a frog with an image of a 7-color rainbow,” Egida quoted an unnamed defense attorney as saying.

    And then you call Russia right wing? Going to 4chan and posting a rainbow flag doesn’t make that place any less of a neonazi shithole. Why a frog specificaly? Is that not an obvious dog whistle or what?

    Don’t misunderstand me, it absolutely sucks that Russia is a socialy conservative shithole. I can give you the benefit of doubt and say you’re just some random Ukrainian expats completely clueless that happen to be LGBTQ but you have to damn well pick your battles, you’re in Russia not New York, you don’t get to wear an Ukrainian flag in time of war, period. This would be true literaly anywhere else in the world too or do you think you get to wear a German flag in Moscow 1943 just because you’re an expat?

    I am confident this would not have happened without that incredibly bright decision and this is a stupid struggle session almost embarrassing, and you say Americans lack critical reading ability.

    Also The Moscow Times despite claiming to be Russian is online published from the Netherlands. Yeah that is about as legitimate as Putin launching a Russian version of NYT lol.

    • TechnoUnionTypeBeat [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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      9 months ago

      Calling the rainbow flag “Western Values”

      Thinking all frogs are dog whistles

      I’m diagnosing you with a terminal case of online, the cure is to step outside and touch grass for 10 hours (not consecutively)

    • WithoutFurtherBelay@hexbear.net
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      9 months ago

      Yeah the person is cringe asf but how are rainbow earrings western values

      Edit: Also do you really think it was a Pepe frog? Frogs have been a thing with gay people for… fuck knows how long

      • AssortedBiscuits [they/them]@hexbear.net
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        9 months ago

        Rainbows are ultimately a Western symbol of queerness. There wasn’t an international queer conference where queer people from all over the world voted on rainbows as an international symbol of queerness. The rainbow flag originated in San Francisco during the late 70s where it then spread to the rest of the US and later the rest of the Western world. It only penetrated the non-Western world through Western-back NGOs.

        This is the problem with pinkwashing. Non-Western queer people are essentially set up to fail by Western-back NGOs, making them entirely dependent on those NGOs. You can see this in the way some Chinese enbies use TA pronouns instead of using or inventing a Chinese character as their pronoun. If you’re a queerphobic asshole who thinks queerness is just Western d-word, then a bunch of enbies going around using the Western Latin alphabet instead of Chinese characters to describe themselves would pretty much confirms queerness as Western d-word. This is not the fault of the Chinese enbies, but the Western-backed NGOs who purposefully push the idea of using TA as a pronoun knowing that the more reactionary elements of Chinese society would weaponize this to push queerphobia, further pushing those enbies into the arms of the NGOs. The NGOs want the enbies to be estranged from mainstream Chinese society and are taking advantage of queerphobia to essentially groom those enbies to become potential Western agents of color revolution.

        Queer people have existed throughout history and throughout every single human society, which means people don’t have to use a foreign symbol with pinkwashing baggage but just need to uncover the queer history of their particular society and use those symbols instead.

        • WithoutFurtherBelay@hexbear.net
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          9 months ago

          Queer people have existed throughout history and throughout every single human society, which means people don’t have to use a foreign symbol with pinkwashing baggage but just need to uncover the queer history of their particular society and use those symbols instead

          Or… just use the symbols? They’re not reactionary. I refuse to say random western sociopaths can just appropriate a symbol of my own liberation and make it bad forever

          • AssortedBiscuits [they/them]@hexbear.net
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            9 months ago

            It’s more politically expedient to use symbols that are homegrown rather than symbols from a foreign place that’s hostile to your home country. Symbols mean different things to different people. From the perspective of the US and the West in general, the rainbow flag is a symbol of queer liberation, but from the perspective of people not from the West, the rainbow flag is just some pinkwashing bullshit. You can’t just ignore the non-Western reading of the symbol especially when we’re talking about what the rainbow means in non-Western countries. It makes a lot more political sense to just find different symbols that actually come from the local culture. By embracing the Western symbol, you’re already subtly insinuating that queerness is some Western invention, which is a queerphobic talking point.

            There’s nothing inherently queer about rainbows. Gay people don’t piss out rainbows, and trans people don’t shit out rainbows. Rainbows are just symbols, which means they ought to be judged based on political expediency on whether to adopt them and where and who to display them to like any other symbol.

            • WithoutFurtherBelay@hexbear.net
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              9 months ago

              By embracing the Western symbol, you’re already subtly insinuating that queerness is some Western invention, which is a queerphobic talking point.

              Ok, but like… I’m not

              People can use whatever symbols they want, the argument isn’t over whether or not they come from the West, but if they’re inherently some sort of imperialism by their mere existence that implies the need for violence

              • AssortedBiscuits [they/them]@hexbear.net
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                9 months ago

                People can use whatever symbols they want,

                And people will interpret those symbols whatever they want as well. Political symbols serve a political purpose, and if they are detrimental to whatever political project they are trying to accomplish, then they ought to be discarded.

                • WithoutFurtherBelay@hexbear.net
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                  9 months ago

                  But if it doesn’t make sense why I’m arguing so hard, it’s because the phrase “western values” sort of implies this weird connotation that, beyond simply being a symbol people associate with direct US influence, it is associated with some sort of evil, insidious gay worldview. This might seem like splitting hairs but it tread so close to Nazbol territory to defend that specific terminology that it freaks me out. If it was just “western symbols” or “probability of being a western spy” it would make perfect sense, but “western values” conjures images of hordes of scheming Untermench soft-men carving away the fabric of strong insert country here society.

                  As if the issue is the things these organizations claim to support and not the fact they are blatant lies. Gay liberation being a “western value” is about as true as democracy, as in, not at all (we just pretend it is so we can have Cassus Belli on random countries). If we try to compensate for every possible concept the US tries to appropriate then we’re going to end up having insane positions like “war crimes are actually good because the US said they weren’t” (probably with the context of the US lying about them happening in the first place)

                  Like, imagine if we responded to claims of the “Uyghur genocide” by claiming that being against genocide is a Western value being pushed on unwilling countries, instead of just pointing out the very obvious fakery of the whole thing. People would rightfully call us sociopaths and monsters.

          • Tankiedesantski [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            9 months ago

            I refuse to say random western sociopaths can just appropriate a symbol of my own liberation and make it bad forever

            I think Hindus, Buddhists, and Jains probably have some bad news for you on that front.

      • BynarsAreOk [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        9 months ago

        This is one example maybe

        People are sharing the video of a Ukrainian song about Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera being sung at the “Pride” thing in Munich and remarking that it’s somehow funny, schizophrenic or paradoxical. It is not. Being pro-Ukrainian is an expression of political loyalty toward the American empire, and so is supporting politically organized homosexuality (I don’t want to get into discussions about identity vs behavior vs politics, etc, let’s just keep it at that term). Politically organized homosexuals all over the world view the USA as a homeland they owe political loyalty to; the USA views them as their citizens or clients whom they have to protect to uphold their reputation as a world power, up to the point of intervening in the politics of sovereign countries, deploying sanctions, etc. In geopolitical terms there is no functional difference between the Ukraine, Taiwan, politically organized homosexuals, Kurds, feminist organizations, Uyghurs, etc. They all act as American client groups and publicly pledging allegiance to their causes is just another way of showing deference to the USA.

        RWA is incredibly cringe btw, I don’t endorse them, but this point is undeniable.

        Or perhaps this video where the Nazis are literaly telling us they stand against liberal values.

        Someone walking around with a Ukrainian flag and LGBTQ symbolism is at best a very priveledged liberal completely buying into the idea that western values will come and save them, not realizing the absurdity of this irony. In any case everyone in Russia knows Ukraine is just as socialy conservative as they are.

        • Moonworm [any]@hexbear.net
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          9 months ago

          and so is supporting politically organized homosexuality (I don’t want to get into discussions about identity vs behavior vs politics, etc, let’s just keep it at that term). Politically organized homosexuals all over the world view the USA as a homeland they owe political loyalty to;

          I wonder why they don’t want to get into that.

        • WithoutFurtherBelay@hexbear.net
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          9 months ago

          I never said I supported Ukraine, the fuck

          Also I refuse to believe in the age of the Internet, mail, and phone lines, that queer western symbolism ONLY spread through NGO’s or western influence. That sounds like total reactionary bullshit to me. This is some insane Nazi homophobe shit. How the fuck would that even happen? NGO’s hunting down anyone who orders a pride flag without joining them?

          Edit: Sorry, my reactionary sensor is overtuned and I’m way too hostile here. I’m willing to buy that this is a thing, it just seems super weird.

    • trot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      9 months ago

      Also The Moscow Times despite claiming to be Russian is online published from the Netherlands. Yeah that is about as legitimate as Putin launching a Russian version of NYT lol.

      Here is a Russian source if that is a problem, saying more or less the same thing: https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/6480674

    • MayoPete [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      9 months ago

      Bad take.

      No government should be able to stop people from expressing themselves in whatever way they see fit, as long as that expression isn’t hurting other people.

      I know Russia used to be the seat of the USSR, but that doesn’t mean I have to give the modern, chuddified nation it’s become benefit of the doubt.