askchapo

She is at the point where she has a work-related breakdown at least once per week, and wants to quit her job. If that's what it takes for her to get better I am completely fine with it, but I can't help but think that this would happen in any job, because:

1. She wants to work the exact hours listed in her contract, without counting breaks of any kind so she effectively works more than 8 hours per day. She doesn't want to cheat her employer, despite knowing about wage theft.

2. She doesn't want to inconvenience anyone, so she consents to doing things that are too much for her. The biggest offender here are the work trips, she is very introverted and socialization tires her out, especially considering that she fakes her facial expressions and the way she speaks in order to fit in, so having to do that for 4 consecutive days with her coworkers is really taxing for her. Despite that, she goes anyways, because she doesn't want to inconvenience her manager and coworkers and comes back in a worse state than before she left. This also applies to working on things she doesn't like, which might have been avoided if she tried speaking to her manager (who is a pretty decent person luckily).

I have also been burnt out during uni, and from experience know that if you don't stop on your terms, when your body and mind "tell" you you are at your limit, you are going to collapse in a much worse manner, so I want to prevent this somehow. But I feel like I can't do anything except observe her walk a dangerous path without robbing her of her agency and that's frustrating. Does anyone have some ideas for this?

I promise I am not a reactionary, but I am somewhat uneducated on the subject so I might say something offensive accidentally, sorry in advance about that.

So, does gender dysphoria stem from a disconnect between the body and some "gender socialization" function of the brain, which could be solved by getting socialized and treated by everyone as the correct gender from the start, or something that stems from a disconnect between the brain and the actual body parts and hormones, so the transition is needed to alleviate that, or both?

I have a few:

• I was in my house at night and got scared, so I went to go get my parents. Their dream bedroom was huge, though, and almost pitch-black, so all I could see was a bit of carpet directly underneath and around me. The carpet swarmed with fist-sized bugs that skittered around and over my feet.
• I was on a beach with my brother, looking at him while he faced me. My brother's face was grotesquely distorted, elongated and stretched to one side. His eye socket on that side took up a good portion of his face, and it was stuffed with what must have been dozens of regular-sized eyeballs.
• I was trapped with my family in a big outdoor area surrounded by concrete walls, with the ground covered with gravel and trash. We were all sitting together on a long bench atop a trash pile, and we couldn't leave the bench because we were being menaced by an animate blue plastic tarp that wanted eat us and the bench was - somehow - the only safe place. The tarp fluttered in front of us, then reared up onto one edge and struck at us like a cobra, accompanied by a sound like duct tape being violently torn off of something. The bench protected us, so we were unharmed, but we were all very distressed and afraid.

I stand up, I look out my window at the big city. I think 'how is any of this real, and why do I have to age and eventually die?'

I wake up in the morning in my weird little flat. I wonder to myself, 'so this is it, huh? I just do this until my body fails?'

I cook myself a meal. I find out how a museum works behind the scenes. I get a tour of an office. I see my friends go out. I book a movie ticket. I work out. I watch a comedian. I listen to a podcast. All of these things just make me ponder what the point of it all is. Am I doing it wrong? Am I doing it pretty well? Why should I accumulate all this knowledge if I'm just going to die? What's the point in watching my stupid obscure movies that I can't even talk to people about? Am I missing out on the human experience?

Realistically I'm a happy ape. All my needs are satisfied. But I am a sad human.

I think it's all linked to graduating. The pressures on to do well, the workload is racking up, and then once that's all done I just get thrown into the real world. That's it. Then it truly is just doing the same thing over and over. Then it really is a question of survival. Would it be better to just be a dumb neolithic huntsman who is grateful for his bed of fur in his cave? What the fuck did those guys even think of when they took psychedelics? Well, spirits, I know, but wow, the things in their head must've been so original. If I do them, most of my thoughts are just about the garbage I've watched, and my modern worries that are worrisome but relatively tame.

Is this just a normal thing to go through, and then you get on with it and accept that this is just how things are?

Maybe life is simply starting to get to me, and time will tell if I crack under pressure.

I'm not very informed on modern China and there's a ton of sources accusing China of killing and even harvesting organs from Uyghurs and Falun Gong believers.

Is there any truth to those claims or is it all ?

I lost my cellphone a few days ago and don't wanna pay too much for another one. I'd like to keep it under $200. Thank you in advance comrades.

I want to learn more about the conflict and interventions in Ethiopia and Eritrea, but from a left-wing source. Many sources hint at socialist vs. capitalist disputes and interventions, and there are religious angles here too, but I haven't seen this pulled together into a coherent narrative. Any recommendations for something good?

Before this runs the risk of being a struggle session about arming/disarming the Proletariat, let me specify this is specifically about the belief that holds deeply that he, or someone like him, may be the lucky winner of a heroic tale of personal vigilante triumph and save the day and get praised for shooting the bad ( ) guy with a gun.

Notice how that just about never happens, no matter where the mass shooting happens? Police presence doesn't often matter either, not until the shooting is basically done, unless one of their own gets shot first.

What excuses have you heard?

A common one around here is a classic: "everyone is too scared of getting sued these days," with the implication they'd be waving their guns more regularly otherwise, maybe shooting them as a means of communication.

A more specific and spicy take I've heard is "because guns aren't allowed in schools so only bad guys bring them."

(Ask a teacher who has guns in school and they'll tell you, for what it's worth)

spoiler

My partner has all the right political instincts and really wants to bolster their knowledge of the systems of socialism/communism and the ideologies therein.

I was initially thinking of recommending Blackshirts and Reds by Parenti as that was an entry point for me to shed any remaining lib tendencies I had.

Would love to hear what y'all would recommend!

Thinking of joining an ml party. I’ve been doing little things with dsa and other orgs now and again but it gets tiring having to hold my tongue around liberal progressives all the time and I’d like to be part of an org where I theoretically don’t have to do that.

If you’re in one of these parties, why do you like it, why should I join? I’m also mainly interested in any reasons why I should not join any of these orgs. Like are any of them just full of cops, or are they political cults full of abusers or anything? Tbh right now I’m leaning towards frso just because I like their stance of national liberation struggles within the us and also the idea that they’re sort of a “pre-party” organization, since I recognize while I’m probably knowledgeable enough theory-wise to join an ml organization, I definitely still have a lot of learning I need to (and would like to) do. But it would be nice to have comrades and not just be reading alone in my room lol.

But that is by no means set in stone and I’m hoping someone can give me a rundown of the ml landscape in the USA and/or guide me away from any parties I probably shouldn’t join.

I am taking part in a uni course about the Feminist revolution in Iran. The lecturer has been going over the Iranian revolution in 1979 in a very, shall we say, interesting way.

I do not want to discredit their pov on this as I am obviously a Westoid, but the way this is being framed is that before the revolution things were better for women. The lecturer said the revolution happened because people disliked the Shah having more than others, but she did not elaborate this in any way. One would think the complaints of people were pretty big for them to start a revolution? But I know very little about this.

After the revolution women were to have equal rights, but over the next years the dictatorship which is named as Islamic removed them and things like the hijab became mandatory. She stated that people were given false promises and betrayed and this is why the people sided with the revolution. Where does this framing come from? Was it the same people going for revolution that ended up in places of power?

Now my understanding is that the social democratic movement there was destroyed by the West in the 50s and the following twenty+ years under the Shah led to a sort of pseudorevolution that wasn't entirely progressive in nature. Is this correct or wrong?

Also how did the revolutionary force become so deeply conservative? The lecturer told us that before this there was no national religion as such and things like wearing a scarf were personal choices. This was then turned into a mandatory thing starting from workplace dresscode to eventually all public life, however at home people to this day do not follow these norms.

The Women Life Freedom movement is then a result of the way these last decades have eroded all womens rights.

I will include the following questions as well:

If this reactionary tendency in societies is always high, how do we make sure our revolution does not lead to something like this? Or was this all external influence?

If we accept that there always tends to be external influence, what can we do to make sure the reactionary force does not get on top and be in a position to dictate things like womens rights? (I am spesifically thinking of Hamas in Palestine now being the force that is driving change, if they stay in power, won't that easily result in a second Iran when it comes to Islamic nationalism/minority rights?)

How then can we engage in critical support of operators who have a high chance of creating systems of oppression?

Any history on Iran, feminism and ML and other thought very welcome.

Yes, he described Palestinians as "the bugs" and said some other really fucking ignorant quotes from that movie without the slightest understanding of Paul Verhoeven's intent (his effort may have been doomed from the start; he even scolded actors on set for "not getting it" and just enjoying the fascism).

I have some license with what I say because I'm moving and transferring out of state in a few weeks but I also don't want to have a bad mark on my record by saying something particularly scary about the IDF, so what should I tell him on Monday?

Looking for info to disprove this stigma, I don't really have much other than one academic research paper I found but I don't think if the guy I'm arguing with would be willing to sit through and read that. He dismissed it as queer theory which he says has been "debunked" idk what the hell queer theory is. Anyway from what I can tell with this dude the simple and more obvious the better but it must also be backed by peer reviewed research

This is something I've wondered about but never really seen an official leftist position on, and it's gotten a lot more relevant with the ongoing Palestinian uprising. Also curious if there is any good reading out there on this subject.

The kind that thinks communism is the same as nazism and thinks communism is when the government does things.

I hate liberal brain worms.

They seriously do as much damage to the left as fascists by punching to the left and spreading capitalist anti-left propaganda. They overall weaken leftism and help fascism.

We need more left unity, folks. Fash ain't gonna bash themselves.

Yes I know that fascism is a playable ideology in Disco Elysium, but presenting fascism as with its integral ugly reality, glaring contradictions, and unsustainable death drive is a pretty leftist (and correct) way of portraying it.