China is genociding trans people right now!!1! (from Mastodon)
Britain lobotomized gay people into the 1960s, and nearly every western politician was a virulent homophobe and transphobe well into the 1990s.
nearly every western politician
wasis a virulent homophobe and transphobe well into the1990s2020s.
Fixed that for you 😉
But yeah, liberals (even so-called leftists) very much like to pretend that western countries weren't even worse about this
Why do people make this about a country as an entire block? There are trans people and trans allies in all countries. All countries have transphobes in them as well. We can discuss particular policies and say we are in solidarity with the local allies in those countries. However the way this is depicted is some sort of weird orientalist kenard to bash "orientals" for their backwardness rather than stand and help people in the more transphobic regions.
I'd like to know how we can create better environments for sexual and trans minorities without state department manipulations.
Seriously, has anyone heard of (for example) Alan Turing? That's a famous case of how the West treats queer people, and that's the snowflake on top of the tip of the iceberg.
Their thanks for helping them win WW2 was to bully him to death, kinda like what happened to the IWW after the cold war.
Literally just blaming the commies for actual shit we have on record of the Nazis coughandthealliescough doing.
I once saw a British architectural history program about a rich gay British man's house. He had built a scooby-do level contraption with false walls and a turntable so that he and his male partner could sleep next to each other, but if visitors came they could press a button and separate their rooms and beds.
Anyway, definitely an LGBT friendly democracy.
I can walk up and down my local street right now and find at least 10 stickers calling for active genocide of trans people; I scrape them off when I find them, they go back up within a week.
Most of my more well off trans friends are making plans to flee the country, i've had to kick out 2-3 men from my friend group in the last year for making trans genocide jokes/comitting hate crimes against my trans friends.
I know some gay comrades in China, they're doing fine and partying hard as always lol...
I live in the UK.
To be fair the US having black superstars and politicians doesn't mean black people aren't oppressed, Ukraine having a Jewish president doesn't mean Nazis aren't in power, and so on. Representation isn't everything.
Although I wonder if Uyghurs you're talking about rose to national stardom by promoting Uyghur culture and language. If so, that would be a good case. But if they're like Xinjiang-born singers performing in Mandarin that probably doesn't mean that much.
You raise a good point, to which I think the best response is to look at Dilraba - the most famous Uyghur actress at the moment. Here is the poster of her acting debut, which was nominated for the Chinese equivalent of an Emmy:
This is the plot synopsis:
"Anarhan" takes place in the late 1940s to early 1950s, during the liberation of Xinjiang. In a poor village in Kashgar, Xinjiang, Landlord Osman offers young Anarxan as a concubine to Commissioner Emin in an effort to please him. Anarxan, in love with the brave and handsome Qurban, refuses to marry Emin, and her family becomes brutally persecuted by Osman. At the same time, Emin joins forces with Inspector Masha to stop the Communist Party from marching into Xinjiang. Raxman, believing that the Communist Party can change their miserable lives, helps the People’s Liberation Army and tasked forces arrive to Xinjiang. The villagers engage in a series of struggles to fight the evil landlords that once oppressed them, and finally welcome a new life.
So at least in the case of the most famous Uyghur actress, her career was launched by a Uyghur role about Uyghur characters fighting evil landlords.
They targeted communist countries when there is a much stronger case to denounce fascist regimes on this topic, anti-communism is reaching McCarthyism levels
Didn't the western allies in WWII literally keep concentration camps/ prisons running but just for gay and trans people?
I did some digging and wanted to add context.
Although the Allies liberated concentration camps and freed the people there, there was still a German law (Paragraph 175) that criminalized homosexuality. That law put many gay men back in prison even after being freed from Nazi imprisonment.
Notably, East Germany quickly switched to a narrower definition of “criminal homosexuality”, which meant that it was less likely to be enforced. It also stopped enforcing the law in 1957 and abolished it entirely in 1968. On the other hand, West Germany used the Nazi’s version of the law and arrested 100,000 men and convicted 59,000. The punishments were not as harsh as they were under the Nazis, including shorter prison sentences or only fines, but the law stayed on the books even after the government “deemphasized enforcement” in 1969.
Paragraph 175 was fully removed in 1994 when East and West Germany reunited.
Sources: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/paragraph-175-and-the-nazi-campaign-against-homosexuality#paragraph-after-the-nazi-era-6 https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/gay-men-under-the-nazi-regime https://www.thepinktriangle.com/history/symbol.html
I remember seeing a cool video of a guy visiting I think Shanghai and ending up at a queer Chinese art group or something. I don't remember the name of the vid or the creator. But I swear with YouTube existing you can find almost all kind of niche things if you actually look for it.
Mastodon deleted one of my comments for saying that the nazis supported zionism, place is cooked.
wait a minute... what street corner? send me down there, i don't recognize wherever that is