Gulagsplaining
Well this would explain a lot! The genius (or one of the geniuses) in charge of the @lgbtqgold account undertakes to explain why gulags were such fine fine institutions and Stalin was so tragically misunderstood:
Here’s a mini thread to clarify what a “gulag” is, for those who only have heard it being used as a buzzword and why sending a bigot to one is actually a compassionate, non-violent course of action… https://t.co/K7lxud0kM4
— LGBTQ+ Goldsmiths (@lgbtqgold) September 10, 2018
So… first of all,the USSR no longer exists, therefore "gulags" no longer exist. May as well make a case against orientalism but USSR =/= Russia. Russia is NOT governed by a communist party. Got that? Okay, good.
— LGBTQ+ Goldsmiths (@lgbtqgold) September 10, 2018
But it is “governed” by a former KGB agent, but don’t let that worry you.
Why? The penal system was a rehabillitary one and self supporting, a far cry from the Western, capitalist notion of prison. The aim was to correct and change the ways of "criminals". If it couldn't be done in 10 years, it couldn't be done at all.
— LGBTQ+ Goldsmiths (@lgbtqgold) September 10, 2018
Educational work was also a prominent feature of the Soviet penal system. There were regular classes, book clubs, newspaper editorial teams, sports, theatre & performance groups.
— LGBTQ+ Goldsmiths (@lgbtqgold) September 10, 2018
Don’t you wish you could go live in one right now?
Long story short, friends, the ideas of TERFs and anti trans bigots literally *kill* and must be eradicated through reeducation. Science must be decolonised and de-essentialised in order for this to happen. #noterfsonourterf
— LGBTQ+ Goldsmiths (@lgbtqgold) September 10, 2018
People who don’t consent to repeat the formula “trans women are women” must be eradicated through “re-education” in a nice cozy book-filled gulag.
Such utter stupidity and crass ignorance. Just as well no name is attached because you'd spend years living this one down.
— David Aaronovitch (@DAaronovitch) September 10, 2018
That last tweet says it all.
iknklast,
Agreed. Regrettably, monumental ignorance of history is not confined to the Soviet period.
Yeah, like anyone would really believe they’d send “TERFs” to such wonderful places…
Can someone explain to me how “the ideas of TERFs and anti trans bigots literally *kill* ?” I think there are a few steps missing there, no? Even if I disagree with the idea, does it kill anybody? I still have it rattling around in my head, but it’s got the big red “NO” circle with a slash through stamped all over it. What if you just read the idea? Still fatal? If I see or think about a word or two only, does that maim somebody, somehow?
An idea doesn’t do fuck all until someone acts on it.
@4, I think the idea is that “TERFs” don’t accept genderist ideology, and so the trans lobby contends that speaking up about not accepting genderist ideology increases the level of “transphobia” in the zeitgeist, which inspires more violence from “transphobes” toward trans people than there would have been if the “TERFs” hadn’t spoken out.
It’s ridiculous, of course. No violent man beats up a trans person because he’s been reading Sheila Jeffreys.
It could be true, if several things were different. I do think racist memes and rants and ideology can make racist violence more likely, and the same goes for misogynist and homophobic memes and rants and ideology. If radical feminists were spewing hatred and disgust about trans people and gender-nonconformists, they could be nudging people into turning violent. But it’s a giant leap from *analyzing gender* to *spewing hatred and disgust about trans people*.
I seem to recall that the “TERF ideas kill trans people” argument is also based on the notion that those ideas will lead to more trans suicides. Which seems a little troubling to me even if you grant the dubious factual premises. I mean, if it could be proven that theists were killing themselves because atheists were convincing them there is no god, would that mean that atheists should shut up? Or would we say that we ought to find other ways of addressing that problem (e.g. providing better mental health resources)?
That is actually a serious argument, and there is something to it. One doesn’t want to go all atheist on people who are dealing with a recent death for instance, or on people who find the church a refuge from racism and/or an organizing base to resist racism. It can be a knotty issue.
I agree, but TRAs (trans activists) work hard to confuse the issue. Even I, as agressively TERFY a TERF as you’re likely to meet, would never walk up to a transwoman and say, “You’re a man!”–anymore than most atheists go barging into churches shouting, “There is no God!”
If TRAs were just arguing for trans people to be treated with ordinary respect, the conversation would be very different. But arguing with them in the metaphoric public square is equated to personal attacks. They’re like theocrats: toleration of their views is not enough. You have to agree with them, and their views must be reflected in law, public policy, and medicine.
In their ideal world, no argument is allowed: thus the gulag fantasies. But in the meantime, any argument against their ideology is conflated with hatred. You know those Christians who imagine that atheists hate them and would outlaw Christianity if they could? That seems to be the level of thought in mainstream trans activism these days. It’s totalitarianism in purple hair, with an anime avatar.
Some people just love re-defining things if it helps their agenda. Did you know, for example, that TERFs are not, despite the very obvious ‘F’ in the acronym, actually feminists because they exclude a whole category of women? Never mind that the women in question only qualify as such because of an earlier, agenda-fitting re-defining of ‘women’.
https://freethoughtblogs.com/reprobate/2018/09/09/why-terfs-are-not-feminists/
So, men are women, feminists aren’t feminists, and gulags are fashionable summer camps with free educational facilities. Next up: The ovens at Auschwitz were just for hipsters baking artisan bread. Followed by: Stop hate-shaming Nazis; they were just fun-loving kinksters with a fetish for the sharpest of sharp uniforms.
And I thought it was quantum physics that messed with one’s ideas about reality.
Lady M. re. ‘It’s totalitarianism in purple hair, with an anime avatar.’ Beautifully put. Also, I’m glad that the coffee I I was drinking was only lukewarm; blisters inside one’s nostrils are not pleasant.
Siberian labor camps predated the Communists. It was one of several tools of Czarist oppression that the Bolsheviks adopted enthusiastically. It’s an authoritarian thing, not necessarily a communist thing. And what could be more educational than working someone to death.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katorga#History
And even today, Russia has some prisons in Siberia, infamous for the harsh conditions, if not the more fatal forms of “re-education” of earlier decades.
Apart from any historical revisionism, the whole “Hey, we only want to imprison people so we can gently re-educate them” thing is ghastly.
#7, exactly right. The rate of suicide among transgender people is horrifyingly high, so the argument is that doing anything upsetting to that group is potentially killing people.
But how far do you go? Surely everyone isn’t required to do every single thing every transgender person wants or effectively be guilty of attempted murder…
Re the trans suicide rate–it’s high, but it’s not as high as is frequently claimed.
And I’m pretty sure that public health officials would point out that constantly talking about suicide and suggesting that any failure of the world to validate their gender identity leads young people to commit it, are NOT the way to lower the rate.
We really need more rigorous attempts to tease apart the factors that contribute to the trans suicide rate. As it is, the study usually referred to overstates the rate (it’s probably on a par with that of lesbian and gay people, which is still too damn high) and does not isolate trans status from possible co-morbidities.
Further, we do not know whether or not transition helps. For transmen (natal women), passing doesn’t seem to help at all.
https://4thwavenow.com/2015/08/03/the-41-trans-suicide-rate-a-tale-of-flawed-data-and-lazy-journalists/
– Gender critical ideas “literally kill” trans people
– USSR gulags are a “compassionate, non-violent” destination.
Fucking amazing stupidity. One can only hope that this account is a troll account aiming to discredit trans ideology… but the sad thing is, it is impossible to tell.
The Gulag was the whole apparatus of Stalinist terror, mass imprisonment, and slavery. There isn’t such a thing as ‘a gulag’ or ‘two gulags.’
The wiki-def lays out the meaning:
“Main Camps’ Administration” or “Chief Administration of [Corrective Labor] Camps”) was the government agency in charge of the Soviet forced labor camp system that was created under Vladimir Lenin and reached its peak during Joseph Stalin’s rule from the 1930s to the 1950s. ‘
Lady M @ 9
Bingo. The parallels are many and exasperating. The removal of all boundary between the ideology and the person; the treatment of all of it as Absolutely Sacred and Not To Be Disputed; everything that flows from that.
I’ve read elsewhere that the tweets have now been deleted; apparently someone at LGBTQ Goldsmiths has been…
(dons sunglasses)
…re-educated.
They have their own cinema, their own newspaper, their own television station, a credit-card system, and if you’re a good boy and cough up the secrets, you are gracefully retired into the old people’s home… They also have a very impressive graveyard.