StalinwasaGryffindor [he/him, comrade/them]

A libertarian then? What are your views on the age of consent?

Tag yourself, I’m the spiny fish demon in the top left

Seriously though, this is pretty cool. I love the variety of demons, so much weirdness like the guy with a face-butt on the bottom right

Wow, this is so beautiful and moving. I’m in awe

It’s not an original observation, but it was something that once I was aware of really made me question why sanctions are so normalized.

If you’d like a better explanation from people who are much smarter than me I recommend the podcast Citations Needed. They’ve got an episode that goes into the harm sanctions cause, especially to the most vulnerable people in the target country.

The following link has both the podcast and a transcript if you prefer reading over listening:

https://citationsneeded.medium.com/episode-106-the-sanitization-of-sanctions-56f976af6019

I’m very confused by what you mean about sending people to die? I’m talking about civilian deaths due to invasions and sanctions. I don’t believe you can actually be supporting queer people while bombing them and/or starving them with sanctions.

I also don’t fully agree that my arguments are us-centric. I focus on the US and UK because I am Anglo and so am more aware of the role they play in the world.

I don’t believe anyone on hexbear is actually cheering for people who would remove us from existence. I’m LGBT+ myself, and a huge part of why I’m against the current capitalist system we live under is that I see it as incredibly harmful for people like me. There are numerous examples, such as anti-trans laws in the US, the extreme anti-trans rhetoric in the UK, the American funding of draconian anti-LGBT+ laws in African countries. I also truly don’t value people in western countries higher than people in the rest of the world, so when I see the death toll from our military interventions and siege warfare in the form of sanctions, it makes my blood boil. 100s of thousands of people were killed by the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan alone; statistically thousands of them were LGBT+. This means the coalition forces killed more queer people than the countries that have actual death penalties for homosexuality.

I don’t love Russia, they’re a capitalist country with terrible laws and a regressive culture, but Ukraine isn’t really any better. They’ve elevated right wing militias which have targeted people like me and banned trans women from leaving the country.

China is behind on LGBT+ rights, but seem to be moving in the right direction. Cuba has the most progressive LGBT+ laws in the world. Vietnam is moving in the right direction pretty rapidly as well.

I hope this helps you understand why at least one of our users thoughts on these issues. I don’t speak for anyone but myself, but I feel certain my views are quite close to the majority of hexbears.

This doesn’t even go into how our countries prop up anti-LGBT+ regimes like Saudi Arabia or the other gulf states. In the Israel example, they will entrap gay men and force them to act as spies, placing their lives in greater jeopardy. The recent burst of anti-LGBT+ laws in African countries are being funded and even written by American churches, churches which are untaxed and thus funded by the US government.

Hey, so I wanted to talk about this point a bit more. I’m LGBT+ myself, and I used to have issues with countries that are definitely not queer friendly. What changed my thinking about this was seeing how so-called progressive countries are far more harmful to us than most countries that have actual anti-LGBT+ laws.

The main example I would point to is Israel. I used to be somewhat supportive because I bought into the fact that they do give us some rights, whereas the main groups fighting for Palestinian people are not friendly to us. However, because of how many civilians are killed by Israel they objectively kill more LGBT+ people than Hamas or the PLA. A few years back there was a major bombing campaign against Gaza in which over 60 Palestinian children were killed. Statistically some of those kids would have grown up to be LGBT+ if they had been allowed to live. Now, being LGBT+ in Palestine is NOT a great situation, but it’s still better to be alive and have a chance to fight for better rights.

This applies even further for NATO and the US military. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed in the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan alone. Many of those people were LGBT+. Statistically the US war machine is the single biggest killer of people like us in the world.