Notices by timorl (timorl@social.wuatek.is), page 2

@pettter You could theoretically get noncapitalist colonialism, e.g. if a monarch extracted resources for the monarchy – arguably what Leopold did in the Congo could fall under that, but he was kinda enriching himself personally rather than the institution of monarchy, so I think the possibility remains theoretical.

The difference with empires seems much clearer to me – they usually describe collections of states, rather than single states. There might be a single state at the center of the empire, but the imperial core might consist of multiple states as well. This is a pretty fuzzy category though – I could see the American Empire as having the core in the US and a lot of peripheral countries under it’s (partial) control, or a Western Empire, where the core consists of the US+Europe+Canada+Australia (and perhaps some other’s I forgot), with various degrees of “coreness” for different states. In the first case you could look at Europe as a soft periphery of the American Empire, or as a core of its own European Empire. I think these are lenses for analysis rather than strict descriptions of reality. Oh, and I’m definitely not trying to imply these are the only contemporary empires, just examples.

Just a dump of how I tend to use the term, not sure if that’s in any way a useful answer for you.

@freemo I think I’ve spotted the confusion here. All the terms under the LGBTQ+ umbrella are mostly about personal identity, so what people call themselves and want to be called. This is the context in which “queer” very much makes sense, either for people who haven’t yet figured out the details, but know they don’t fit the cisheteronormative default, or for those who did not end up fitting into any of the other boxes fully (plus some political meaning, but that’s kinda separate).

If you want to be specific and precise when referring to a group then there are almost always better terms – at least in medical, law, and social contexts, I cannot think of any other relevant ones. The specific division you advocate for here is extremely rarely appropriate anyway – you almost always want to refer to a strict subgroup of one of the groups you described, or to a group that encompasses people from both groups.

Having said that, while I can argue that the division you propose is bad on purely practical grounds, I have to also point out that categorizing humans has an extremely fraught history to say it lightly, so ignoring the political implications of any proposed categorization is, in my opinion, extremely unwise.

You seem to be somewhat confused about the gender/sex distinction. In this context “sex” does not refer to just genes, but general biology, including hormones and the phenotype, while gender expression (I have to specify the second part here, since “gender” can, confusingly, refer to at least two other concepts that are very relevant to the discussion, but fortunately not to the distinction here) refers to social indications of gender (behaviour, dress, etc). Thus being intersex is purely about sex, regardless of the specific syndrome. Some people have argued this is a reason why they shouldn’t be included under the LGBTQ+ term at all, but it turns out that their interests politically align with the group often enough that they usually are.

@freemo Ooof, you should be careful with that, LGB is mostly used by transphobes who want to divide the movement. LGBTQ+ (or any of the other commonly used acronyms) are in a non-insignificant way a descriptor of a political movement/group that has shared political interests, it’s not a coincidence that a lot of the activism was done by all these people together, that they have common symbols etc. Other than the political connection there is also the fact that gender and sexual attraction are pretty strongly connected for most people, so it even makes sense to lump them together from a purely categorization perspective.

If you dislike the acronym then “gender and sexual minorities” is a pretty neutral way of referring to the group, although if you try to split them it gets blurry. I personally like “queer” as a descriptor, but it cannot be used for the whole group, since some members find it offensive.

Oh, and being intersex isn’t in any way about gender expression, and being trans and being a crossdresser are about gender expression in quite different ways.

@ryanc Wait, Poland?! You got to literally sue your parents to change your documents there…

@freemo Uh, “centrism” doesn’t mean not being for one of the parties, there is quite a lot ideological space that’s not between the US parties. And this is kinda insulting, considering what he thought about moderates.

@freemo Are you seriously suggesting that race was not a (if not the!) political issue then? o.0 Not to mention it still is now.

Besides, you might want to read some of his later writings, where he explicitly advocates socialism. Due to how the party system in the US looks, no socialists (or other left ideologies) particularly like any of the parties, but I don’t think you would call them centrists, no?

@freemo His arguments against “white moderates” are perfectly applicable to any other kind of political moderate though. Why do you think he only applied them to race politics? Plus, he wasn’t writing about “moderately racist people” – the letter was about people who, through a misguided vision of being moderate, kept insisting that his goals were just (so they weren’t really personally racists, just, as we would say today, insufficiently anti-racist), but the timing was wrong, a mantra that is oft repeated in many political contexts when some group wants change for the better.

Amusingly, I kinda agree that he was a moderate, since he only advocated democratic socialism, which is a moderate position from my perspective. It was, and continues to be, to the left of any of the US party positions though. He was also to the left of both parties on race, quite obviously. That’s why I vehemently disagree with calling him a “centrist” in the US context, although feel free to call him a moderate if you consider democratic socialism moderate.

@chjara Me on my way to recycle my headmates into new species.