HavanaSyndromeVictim [she/her]

what does Esperanza advocate?

“The Equality Model” aka rebranded Nordic Model, which decriminalizes prostitution but leaves all other parties involved criminalized. What other parties? surely just johns and pimps right???

Af3irm will have you believe that will end the demand for the sex trade and save everyone. In actuality these policies are carried out by the carceral state, social workers and associated programs are just another arm of that system.

When partial criminalization occurs, the stigma toward sex workers is not reduced. We can see this shit in action w FOSTA/SESTA, where even hosting SWers in an online space to meet or discuss is criminalized. How does this help collectivization and solidarity without further atomizing and hyper-individualizing this struggle?

Imagine calling yourself leftist and your analysis beginning and ending with what you’ve heard on podcasts, rather than from workers in active struggle. Thanks for taking the bait and bringing this out into the open, it’s been bugging me how under the radar it’s been

leftists will dogmatically agree w “Sex work is work!” or “swerfs get fucked!” but the second they hear actual swerf arguments and material realities of SWers, they’re immediately onboard w SWERF rhetoric that just doesn’t say the quiet part out loud

if you don’t actually work in the material reality being discussed and don’t know what you’re talking about?

Shut The Fuck Up And Listen

Mao:

Marxist philosophy holds that the most important problem does not lie in understanding the laws of the objective world and thus being able to explain it, but in applying the knowledge of these laws actively to change the world. From the Marxist viewpoint, theory is important, and its importance is fully expressed in Lenin’s statement, “Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.” But Marxism emphasizes the importance of theory precisely and only because it can guide action. If we have a correct theory but merely prate about it, pigeonhole it and do not put it into practice, then that theory, however good, is of no significance. Knowledge begins with practice, and theoretical knowledge is acquired through practice and must then return to practice.

On Practice

so glad you know more about the organizing efforts and the material reality of the person making this video than they do themselves :)

yessssss!! absolutely! to quote fanon on marx:

When you examine at close quarters the colonial context, it is evident that what parcels out the world is to begin with the fact of belonging to or not belonging to a given race, a given species. In the colonies the economic substructure is also a superstructure. The cause is the consequence; you are rich because you are white, yon are white because you are rich. This is why Marxist analysis should always be slightly stretched every time we have to do with the colonial problem.

We as leftists can’t just take marx at face value, the material world marx observed is not the exact same material world we currently live under, and we need to adjust our analysis and internalize the lessons of the revolutionary struggles from the past century

I absolutely love this whole quote. reminds me of when leftist swerfs try to point at Kollontai as a figure to read in this regard, as if her writings weren’t highly tailored to the revolutionary moment in the nascent Soviet Union and those material conditions.

one overview w quote https://www.hamptonthink.org/read/an-ideal-blueprint-the-original-black-panther-party-model-and-why-it-should-be-duplicated?rq=lumpenproletariat

Over the years, Marx’s assessment and discarding of the “lumpenproletariat” - a population that he described as “members of the working-class outside of the wage-labor system who gain their livelihoods through crime and other aspects of the underground economy such as prostitutes, thieves, drug dealers, and gamblers” - had been accepted by many on the Left. However, the BPP’s familiarity with Zedong and Guevara led them away from this commonly accepted notion, and their philosophy paralleled that of Frantz Fanon, who in his ongoing analysis of neocolonialism, deemed the lumpen to be “one of the most spontaneous and the most radically revolutionary forces of a colonized people.”

:cringe: bad take , read about the importance of the lumpen in decolonial contexts.

The return of the downbear button :downbear:

Can I get a fuck SWERFs in the chat? :transshork-sad:

wow, huge mood. hugs to you comrade, we’ll get through this somehow :heart-sickle: