This missed the historical context for why downvotes were disabled on Hexbear in the first place. Moderators were trying to implement trans-friendly policies and features like pronouns, and reactionary weirdos kept downvoting the shit out of people who agreed with and wanted those features. Mods tried to ban based on upvotes and downvotes, but it didn’t work.

I think the assumption that any site’s general culture will be correct on an issue is a faulty one. Yeah, it’s going to be generally correct about international politics or Marxism or something everyone researched on the site probably (when it’s on Hexbear or Lemmygrad at least), but anyone who’s part of a smaller or more fucked over minority has to basically fight an uphill battle to even be listened to even with downvotes off. With downvotes on, someone asking for accommodations or sympathy in a radical or surprising way that other users haven’t seen before will just be shut down entirely. I think a good example of this is how I’ve seen people constantly make fun of others for stuff like not showering and, when people talk about how those with depression often do their best but can’t manage it and so making fun of someone for that can be hurtful, they were just ridiculed. If downvotes were enabled most complaints about ableism or more obscure forms of anti-queer oppression would be pushed to the fringes and ignored.

The main issue with downvotes are that they allow those with hegemonic beliefs to enforce them without considering why they hold those beliefs in the first place.

So ultimately, it’s a trade off between if you want to be open to more radical theory that people would have a knee-jerk reaction to and downvote, or be more closed to that theory but allow site members to enforce the popular opinion more strongly

I mean, i think i agree with what you’re saying here, but in the context of communism specifically,

Wouldn’t communism not have a worker’s state anymore? Isn’t productivity kind of just a toxic hold over to be excised once the dictatorship of the proletariat is no longer necessary?

Also, what counts as production? Isn’t something produced just anything with a use-value? Isn’t sex technically a thing with a use-value? (Pleasure, or reproduction). Where’s the difference between it and, like, being a baker of sugary goods? Is this suggesting that people who specialize in making desserts should just stop doing that after we achieve socialism because it wouldn’t directly contribute to general production (and their products would disappear immediately after being consumed?)

Not defending prostitution under a communist or even socialist system, especially because i don’t think it’s possible, but I think it not being possible (or being somewhat coercive to the person doing it) would be the issue, not social parasitism (also, where’s the line between social parasitism and just being disabled? If someone can’t work, wouldn’t that mean that by this framework they deserve to either live without anything except bare necessities, or die from starvation?)

I am not defending prostitution as an act of liberation? I think even getting into this subject was a mistake, because I only cared about it because of the word “prostitute” being used to refer to something that I don’t think really counts as prostitution.

I was defending the abstract idea of someone having sex for reasons besides direct sexual attraction to their partner, not prostitution as we know or in any form our current definition would work with. Like, I don’t think prostitution would even be possible in a communist society, there wouldn’t be any goods or services to really bargain with if everything, including luxuries, was collectively owned

Like I know it looks like I’m moving the goalposts here, but I legitimately just think that the way I was explaining myself was incorrect

I was thinking of what the woman in the article was doing as prostitution, but thought that without any economic coercion or reason to do it, it wouldn’t be wrong. I realize now that without any economic coercion or reason to do it, it isn’t actually prostitution in the first place

It might be possible she is getting payment but the twitter post of her complaining about not getting with someone kind of makes me think she was just trying to get with people there? I mean, let’s be clear, being a weird war-sexpat is extremely gross, but it’s more horrifying and cynical than it is idiotic.

We are in a communist space. You have plenty context to work with: the last thing you have to expect of a critique of prostitution in a place like this is to be done from a point of view of religious puritanism and not from a perspective of principled marxist feminism, which is where @KommandoGZD 's comment and those following them came from.

The bourgeois state promotes the idea that all critiques to the existence of prostitution itself comes from conservative or reactionary perspectives. You are not immune to propaganda: before attempting to write a critique basing on the gut feeling that you get from reading something, try to read what is it that it is actually being said.

“We are communists so we can’t reproduce brainworms on accident” is not a valid defense and you even point that out in this very same comment. I’m not immune to propaganda, but you aren’t, either. Here’s an important question: What about a male prostitute? Do any of these supposed critiques of prostitution as a concept independent of other social context (something that is already blatantly impossible, because no action has any measurable value when removed from all context) hold up if talking about a man selling sex? If it doesn’t, then it indicates the issue is patriarchy, which is a social context.

That aside, because the morality was of prostitution in general is kind of off topic here,

The belief is that this women is an idiot, or some sort of brainwashed fool for deciding to… well, they’re not even selling their body for sex in this case, they’re just having a lot of sex “for free” as far as I can tell. This is so blatantly dehumanizing it’s absurd. It is not idiocy to decide you want to support a military you like by fucking them. It’s weird, and it is not a good idea, especially with how blatantly evil the Ukraine military is and the extremely suspicious power dynamics at play in any military, but lots of human beings enjoy having sex and it isn’t really indicative of someone being brainwashed or being especially stupid for wanting to do something like this.

You could at least acknowledge the wording was a little weird, or anything other than immediately jumping to accusing me of being a brainwashed stooge. I am providing light criticism of the phrasing and tone of a thread, a tone which I think is indicative of a certain kind of brainworms. You can do some self-introspection or not, I don’t really care.

Edit: you are downvoting me far before you would be able to finish reading this comment. I can only assume you’re just pissed about being called out

I mean… that’s why I said “removed from context”. All of this is context, context that was missing from previous comments (which read more like “how dare this woman not be traditional” to me). I agree that prostitution is coercive and wrong in every current implementation.

…Is it? I do not think it is a stretch to say that the despersonalization of a human being into a sexual object is indeed pretty degrading.

I mean, yeah, wanting to have sex is a pretty normal desire for a lot of people, so it’s not a surprise that some people would choose to do so professionally. There are definitely systemic issues at play that coerce people into becoming prostitutes, which makes the industry very bad altogether, but if removed from that context it’s pretty reasonable (and neither of the comments in the chain really seemed to have been complaining about the context)

This entire thread smacks of weirdly sexist brainworms to me

I’m not even talking about this because I’m believe in that “feminism is only about individual choice!” bs, but because it’s weird to imply that wanting to be a prostitute instead of a medic or a cook is some kind of mental degradation, and all three of those things being assumed as the only roles a woman would play in a war is just gross

if you’re cool and hot you get the Left Unity catgirl.

I’m used to everything pro-Ukraine on this instance being downvoted to hell. Everyone who supports Russia is being downvoted instead. What is going on?

Dont make me tap the sign

Fine, capybara ladies.

This but unironically