neutral press organ @req@monads.online

homer simpson.... mobile suit

Non jewish people who yell at Jewish leftists for being antisemitic are the biggest freaks online

Pouet #huevember 24
(35)
#huevember2020 #art

@gonzo This is always Imperialism's rhetoric. The colonized have to earn freedom, by displaying a level of moral fortitude that no one in world history has ever achieved. Only then will the jackboot be removed.

left wing south american countries that are framed as being homophobic in ways that are typical of americans except its used as reasoning to try and delegitimize their governments.

@esvrld i put water in my “very fast noodles” and they just sat there! this is bullshit!

i'm sure keklord14@hentai.slurs has my best interests at heart and would never try to exploit queerness for some kind of a disingenuous gotcha!!

programmers think 4 years of CS classes and a lot of stack overflow searching makes them a useful member of society and that just isn't true

i mean i guess it’s honest?

I think that's it for today's essay on the TL. Two parting thoughts:

1. Read Jasbir Puar. I'm just regurgitating her stuff second- and third-hand.
2. This is a thread all its own, but the homophobia that exists in most of the places maligned by homonationalism *was put there* by imperial powers, purposefully, oftentimes less than a century ago. This isn't always true- Western Europe is sadly not the only culture to ever invent homophobia- but it's true far more often than you might naively think.

But the important thing is: when we say solidarity with peoples of the world, we mean *all* peoples. Solidarity doesn't mean that we only stand up for people we'd be friends with. It means we also stand up for people we hate, for people who probably hate us, and for people who will never, ever meet us but are being screwed over by the same forces.

That's the fundamental issue with homonationalism: it drives the wedge the wrong way. It's merely a way to incorporate queer people within the existing structures of imperialism and colonialism, rather than uniting

One thing that's special about queer people: we're everywhere. Anyone can be gay, of any ethnicity, religion, ability, and so on. This isn't just trite: it presents a problem for capitalism because a queer struggle that truly represented all queer people would have to reckon with all other struggles as well. Homonationalism is a way for it to stand athwart that potential coalition and shout: no.

But why is homonationalism wrong?

Well, imperialism bad; I think everyone who's read this thread up to this point probably agrees with that. The more insidious thing about homonationalism is the way that it erodes solidarity between people. The capitalist class loves it when we fight amongst ourselves, and setting gays against ethnic minorities is a favored tactic. During the marriage equality debate here in the USA conservatives would often talk about the black community as though it were uniquely homophobic. This wasn't true, but that's not the point: the point is pitting white gays against black straights and getting the chaos you cause to question their coalition just enough that you can pass some legislation that'll fuck over them both.

Puar originally wrote during the Bush era iirc but you can see homonationalism everywhere since then. Arguments for trans people to serve in the military rely on homonationalist frameworks: we get all of our gays and transes together to help destroy our Official Enemies.

Homonationalism was at its most egregious recently right after the Pulse nightclub shooting: because the shooter for this was a Muslim, reactionaries both straight and queer rushed to push this event for imperialism. Never mind that it's patently absurd to claim that the United States cares about gay people at home: suddenly, the focus on this attack at home, which should be properly understood in the context of so many other American mass shootings, was used to show how dangerous ISIS is to Americans.

that's the kernel of the idea, but homonationalism isn't about hypocrisy. It's the use of queer people to further imperialist agendas. So when gay people are mistreated in Iran, this is used as a cudgel: a way to warmonger against Iran and to be racist toward the Iranian people. "Look at how backwards these people are! Look at how much better we, in the West are. Wouldn't it be great if we went in and liberated them from this oppressive, homophobic government?"

The veracity of the statement isn't the point. The point is the rhetorical direction it moves: using gay people to further imperial agendas.

The term was coined by Jasbir Puar to describe the way that reactionaries in the United States would wield queer rights in service of imperialism abroad. In plainer language: the exact same people who would deny gays the right to marry and gleefully deny people AIDS medicine at home were suddenly Very Concerned with the rights of gay people abroad.