CommunistCuddlefish

I mean I do care about it in the sense that I care about not wanting the US to become even more of a white supremacist Christian fascist imperialist genocidal autocracy than it already is. But I don't see anything I can do about it that would be even remotely effective. And more than that I just don't see anyone else who actually cares about it enough to even try to do something about it so what good is me "caring" even supposed to do?

Now I do see a lot of white liberals (and "progressives", and even some white people who consider themselves leftists) panicking about it. But then when pressed about what is to be done to stop it, their solution is always, always, ALWAYS just "vote for (Genocide) Joe", which tells me they don't actually care about Project 2025, they just want to use it as a cudgel to get me to vote for the same ghouls who are blowing up Palestinians and who have let the spooky scary Republican Party get this powerful. But when I point out to them that they obviously don't really care because they aren't interested in addressing the roots of fascism or doing anything real to stop fascism, they get all indignant and upset at me, call my takes "disturbing", "monstrous", "privileged", "psychotic", and after getting that a bunch I do have to wonder if maybe I just have some massive blind spot and am getting this wrong. But they won't tell me what is actually factually wrong about what I say.

Besides, what do they want me to do about it? They can't seriously expect me to back a party that loves genocide, but they won't suggest anything else.

Idk I just feel like the majority of people I see raising a fuss about Project 2025 and the threat of a "Trump dictatorship" are comfortable, privileged white liberals, usually white queer liberals, who have never had to worry about the government targeting their demographics until the last few years. I and every other queer poc I know is like, "oh, they're going to go after me for another thing? Sure whatever, put it on the pile of other shit they throw at us, what's one more? Now let's get back to trying to stop the fascist Democratic Party from stealing money from our paychecks to bankroll a genocide against some of the actual most vulnerable and oppressed people in the world. If Project 2025 actually lands here we'll fight that too, but we will NEVER throw away our solidarity with the wretched of the earth to preserve what comfort we do have."

Please Hexbearians, tell it to me straight: Is Project 2025 something we actually need to pay attention to and if so what can we actually do about it? Or is the furor over it just a bunch of fragile white people panicking because they might finally be lumped in with the rest of us and finally get targeted for oppression too?

Turns out I’ve got major gender problems and wish I had been born a girl. [Removed as it was pointed out how problematic and doomer my sentiment was] I'm well past puberty and am very masculine-looking. The dysphoria’s gotten worse over the years though, or maybe the gender affirming feelings have gotten more tempting as I’ve stopped being in denial so much and have explored a bit of transitional stuff — shaving, doing my hair different, less masculine clothing. But I just don’t know what to do next.

I’m terrified by the idea of trying to hormonally transition, mostly because I have a very high sex drive and am very attached to it. Dysphoria about the shape of my genitals aside, I do want my dick to keep getting hard, I want to still be able to orgasm from using it, and I want to still produce cum for my partner to enjoy. From what I’ve read hormonal transitioning would eventually disable all of those, and I feel for me that would be even worse than not transitioning.

I’m also pretty strong and muscular, and I don’t want to lose that muscle and put on a bunch of fat from going on estrogen, which I’ve seen happen to couple friends who’ve transitioned.

So, hormonal transitioning looks too risky for me. Still, I thought maybe I could still achieve a good degree of comfort with non hormonal transitioning, maybe getting rid of all the body hair for a start. But when it comes to non hormonal transitional steps it all feels so incredibly daunting. I’ve been “blessed” with prodigious masculinity, the ability to grow hair all over my body like a beast. Shaving is a pain and I grow hair so fast that my face turns into stubble in less than a day after shaving.

Nonhormonal transitional steps I’ve considered: Shaving all over. Problem: I’ve only shaved a bit of my body and it gets really old and time-consuming really fast.

Laser hair removal. Problem: Supposed to be very expensive, and it works better on people with white skin and light, fair hair, neither of which have I (EDIT: CORRECTION: works better with dark hair so at least I have that going for me). In particular the at-home DIY machines do not work as well in those use cases, and without training there’s more risk of damaging your own skin trying to do it.

Electrolysis hair removal: I had a bit done in the past on my face. It was not super effective, takes a lot of sessions, and was very painful even with a local anesthetic cream. On top of that, while I might be able to have it done on much of my body it is impossible to have done on my face because of Covid — I’d have to take off my respirator and that’s not happening unless I could find a practitioner wearing an N95 in an isolated room with heavy air filtration.

More drastic nonhormonal steps — facial feminization surgery, breast implants — are even more inaccessible because at this point very few healthcare practitioners give a shit about Covid so it’s nigh impossible to see a surgeon or even get to a gender care clinic. Regardless, the uncontrollable hair is a big barrier — I wouldn’t want to consider other options before getting it dealt with in the first place.

Everything seems so painful, risky, and dauntingly expensive to the point where idk how I could afford it anyway.

Any advice would be appreciated. Thank you, comrades.

I remember seeing someone mention there is a Mastodon instance for Hexbear, but I don't remember what it was called. I got kind of bothered by the one I was on (kolektiva.social has a lot of cool rad people but it also has too many unserious people with "tankies fuck off" in their bio), and someone I want to follow blocked the entire kolektiva instance because he was getting harassed by too many racists from there, so I'm looking to make a new account. Hexbear has proven to be the best part of the fediverse I've found so far and it'd be nice to make my new Mastodon account there too.

I watched the show Avatar The Last Airbender for the first time in my life in 2019 on a friend's recommendation. I was somewhat bothered by it seeming appropriative and orientalist, and how it was basically a show about Western imperialism set in the exotic trappings of Eastern and indigenous cultures. Still, I enjoyed those trappings and the martial arts choreography.

But then early on it did anticolonial freedom fighters dirty yet that was portrayed as a good thing, and that bothered me. I chalked it up to children's cartoons in the mid-2000s having to follow certain tropes about violence and didn't just ragequit there. Then when they did the blood-bender dirty I rationalized it away with "well they're kids who haven't been imprisoned and tortured like she has, they haven't learned that you have to be merciless when fighting merciless colonizers." Then when Aang did some bullshit peace-policing and manipulated Katara into not taking the justified revenge she so clearly needed yet that was portrayed as a good thing, I figured hey, I wasn't raised Buddhist, I don't know how this spiritual system handles things, maaaaybe this is in character... (but it was still very shitty of him to get in her way). And I was very close to the end and wanted to see how this played out and I'd already excused a couple bits of lib shit so I kept going.

Despite those flaws, I persisted in watching and found it pleasant and enjoyable enough. When it ended I wanted more. But the very first episode of Legend of Korra was an utter disappointment -- the liberatory heroes of the first series had just implemented neoliberalism and the setting was some uninspired 1920s new world shit, and the political questions that were being set up seemed utterly boring. So I stopped watching and dropped the entire franchise like a hot potato.

Well, apparently the ATLA story gets continued in comics and I was wondering if they're at all good or not. I want to read them because I want them to be good -- there's enough fun stuff in the first series that it could be and there are questions the show left unanswered I think I would like to know. But at the same time the world-building and rank liberalism in some of the plots make me fear that I would just ruin what enjoyment I got out of the show the first time around. If they have even a drop more of liberal "killing your oppressors makes you worse than them" bullshit in it I feel like it would sour any positive feelings I had about the show.

I guess now that I've typed it out the answer is obvious: Don't bother, there's better shit out there to read that isn't written by politically illiterate culturally appropriative liberals. Still, I'd welcome any comrades' thoughts!

I got turned on to CZM with Behind the Bastards and It Could Happen Here Season 1 (aka "Robert Evans doomposts about the impending 2nd American Civil War"). I would have placed them as quite anarchist which, while not my preferred leftist tendency, I still respect as an important faction in the fight for global liberation and international communism.

I had assumed they were leftist and they do seem to be most of the time, but there are some weird and jarring... exceptions.

1. The ICHH host Mia Wong seems to have this unbridled hatred for China. I'm no expert on China and I would not want to live with Chinese working conditions, but they seem to go beyond reasonable critiques into full on animosity.

2. They've been pro-Ukraine without acknowledging that the Ukraine War is a NATO-provoked proxy war, and that continuing to fight over territory that doesn't even want to be Ukrainian has just gotten so many Ukrainians killed for nothing, in a doomed fight. That's fucked up.

3. The sub for Behind the Bastards (yes I know I should leave but there's still niche stuff I like there) appears to be full of Blue MAGA Vote Blue No Matter Who Is Being Genocided shitlib fascists. I only joined it recently and it was jarring to get dogpiled and downvoted for saying such basic things as "fuck Genocide Joe", etc. These fans seem to have Trump Derangement Syndrome. Now, I know CZM has no official relationship with the subreddit, but I can't help feeling it's a mark against them that they attract this crowd! OTOH, CZM platforms a host who's explicitly pro-Palestine and anti-Zionist so maybe judging them by their fanbase isn't fair, and the problem is just that shitlibs have exactly 0 critical thinking skills