this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2023
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I'm going to let someone more educated on the geopolitics involved handle the rest of this (hopefully someone will) but i really want to zero in on this because.
there are like, 2 cishet people on all of Hexbear. Its like the most queer space on the internet thats not explicitly only for queer people.. It is AGRESSIVLY pro-trans, and purged the slightest hints of transphobia in its early days. The admin team is 100% queer i'm pretty sure.
We think the oppression of queer people in Russia is bad. Whatever support an individual Hexbear has for Russia, its not for Putin's regime or the Russian government. It is, as you yourself say, opposition to NATO. Again, I'm not going to get into the why of that, but please don't imply that we support the Russian government's oppression of queer people.
What do you think critical support means?
If that's really true, you may well be the most sheltered person on earth.
Spare me the self-righteousness, if "the people I was rude too were rude back to me" is something you can describe as "the most unsafe space I have ever encountered" without feeling deeply embarrassed, then you have no business trying to pontificate about what actually marginalised people endure. No amount of cope about how you're totally definitely not big mad, but your girlfriend in Canada is, will change that.
So you didn't know what it meant, but you used it to insult someone anyway?
It means support from a place of criticism, in the sense of "I don't agree with them in general, but align on certain things".
Look, I'll back up a bit and try to be more sincere here. There are three points I would like you to consider. The first is that your own behaviour has not exactly been free of toxicity. The second is that we on hexbear are used to liberals coming in with naked bad faith hostility, so we've, unfortunately fallen to the habit of responding in kind. This leads into my third point; the hostility you describe sounds basically like the bog standard normal that I've experienced when trying to converse in mainstream liberal spaces; Hexbear is one of the few spaces where I'm not showered with abuse for the crime of having a political alignment outside the overton window of a country I'm not even from.
Sounds like someone else has already explained the critical support thing to you, I didnt really understand the term at first either and English IS my first language, so I actually understand this one.
I hope you can see that my comrade's defensive stance is because of past experiances and not anything personal.
I actually dont disagree that people here sometimes make unfair assumptions about the person they're talking to. I remember the human and understand where they're coming from and why that assume that though (past experiences with people who are like that). I wish my friends would try to remember the human more too, but I get why they can forget because of their experiences. I hope that makes sense.
I can actually understand all that very well. Sorry about your negative experience
I do want to mention one thing though
Our "weaponized anger" is quiet frequently used in defense of minority groups, particularly trans people. She's gone now but one of our original admins, TransComrade69, was militantly defensive of trans people and it really shaped how our community formed. We also do our best to do the same for other queer people, bipoc, the disabled and nuerodiverse, women, the poor, and (most relevant to the arguments we get into here) people from the global south.
But I actually do understand how our community's stance can be offputting for some people and wouldnt recommend it to just anyone, even leftists.
And they definitely deserve all the protection they need. I am fortunate to have some trans friends myself as well, they are definitely the most oppressed group and even frequently the ignored member of the lgbtqia+ by its own members. By comparison I'm definitely the weakest member as a gay man, I have "passed" to varying degrees for a large amount of my life and so have been fortune to dodge some of the atrocities they are subjected to.
If there's one group that deserves the militant protection in today's environment it is them. That I can definitely appreciate your community does!