![[CW: Transphobic slur] Guy discovers he's pansexual, blames porn for giving him a "fetish"](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/f1a2d2bf-f543-4ad9-aede-55acd279ace7.png){kind=link}
The paper that this is from is the product of a group headed by a self-described “pro-life feminist” and that has retweeted TERFs.
It always sucks when groups with legitimate criticisms of pornography (or anything) dip into bigoted, reactionary bullshit because it poisons whatever valid points they may have made.
A Socialist society (in the Marxist conception) prioritizes societal harmony over personal freedom. Not to a total degree, but definitely more so than under Liberal Capitalism.
Participation in “vices” (pornography, gambling, drugs, sexual promiscuity, etc ) can be fine and fun in moderation. Hell, I partake in many of them, some of them to excess. But it’s also true that any of them can become addictive; that they can disrupt work and family life, they can harm relationships. They can cause disharmony in society.
Within the West, we are drawn to these things as a rebellion against a society we oppose. But in a Socialist society, they can represent a rebellion against Socialist values.
It is a goal within a Socialist government to determine to what extent these things are beneficial to society, if at all. Dialectics should then be used to determine the best course of action to deal with each vice: removing the core disease for which that vice is a symptom; making life bearable without the vice; changing societal norms so that the vice no longer causes disharmony; or just penalizing it out of existence with strict laws.
This sort of socialism is somewhat repugnant to me, I will admit, as unpopular as an opinion as that likely is around here. I am only a Communist because I see it as the best path to maximizing individual freedom, something that so-called ‘individualists’ have repeatedly failed to actually prioritize - Capitalism just sells the aesthetic of ‘individualism’ while still keeping all but the richest of the rich in gold-painted chains.
Prioritizing ‘societal harmony’ over personal freedom is, in my experience, the sort of talk that leads to people like me being ‘penalized out of existence’, which is obviously not an outcome that is desirable to me. I am not interested in assimilation in any respect - I do not want to be beaten into shape by society, but allowed to be myself, regardless of how weird I am.
I’m always reminded of the younger man in the documentary “Loyal Citizens of Pyeongyang in Seoul”, who in his interview says that he left North Korea for China because he was a bit antisocial and just didn’t fit in well with the DPRK’s heavily conformist society. I have to sympathize with him because I’m the same sort of person, and I probably would have done the same thing in his shoes.
But his story to me does not read as a dystopia, but a tragedy - a better society is built that serves well the vast majority, but there are still those who - of not fault of their own - are unsuited for it. You can sympathize with the antisocial man while still recognizing the society is preferable on the whole; and you can recognize the society is preferable on the whole while still trying to improve it further.
I suppose I have higher expectations than simply something that works for the majority - in truth, I suspect that a society that is ideal for cishet nuerotypicals is literally incompatible with one that is ideal for queer nuerodivergent people. Being a queer nuerodivergent people myself, I naturally want to prioritize the well-being of my ‘people’, much as nuerotypical cishet people invariably prioritize the well-being of themselves as a group.
This is why I, in truth, think the only actual solution to this problem is separation and complete autonomy. Even then I am suspect of cishet nuerotypicals allowing such communities to exist - they will always have overwhelming economic power just by numbers alone, it would be very easy for them to acquire coercive control over such an enclave ‘for our own good’ even under, say, an anarchist system.
In truth, I don’t really hope at all. It seems the fate of people like me to always be ‘outside’, regardless of the social organization of the majority - it’s just a matter of exactly how bad it is.