Ah, yeah I relate to that a lot, I used to go out a lot and just deal with the anxiety but now I barely go out at all lol. The first couple of years really screwed a lot of us up, I think. The more you chat with her the easier it’ll be, you got this!

I mean, if she ends up hanging out to watch shows with you it sounds like you did a great job! Doesn’t take away the internal anxiety of social interaction, though, I feel you as I struggle with that myself. I think it can be helpful to ask questions about the other person, people love talking about themselves lol. Ask about what they’ve been reading/watching, how was their weekend, ask exploratory follow up questions, etc. If she’s a communist, maybe she is super passionate about it and that can be a conversation starter. I really like to talk politics and social justice with people, but that’s not always “appropriate”, but if you find someone who is down you can probably talk for hours about it.

Sorry if this is obvious stuff, I’m neurodivergent and some of these things don’t come naturally to me

Crash Bandicoot, Star Ocean 2, Legend of Legaia, Klonoa, Final Fantasy 7 of course, Kingdom Hearts 1

Earthbound, Super Mario World, Chrono Trigger, Donkey Kong Country, Sonic & Knuckles, Bust-a-Move, Vectorman

Hell yeah I’m a former Banana Slug, proud that all the students, like your room mate and yourself, have been holding fast. UCSC has a long ass tradition of radical politics; when I was attending there always seemed to be TA strikes and other Cafeteria/Custodial strikes, sanctioned or wildcat. In the early 2000s there was a ton of ALF activity on campus too. As always tho, fuck 12

Tangent: Back in the day UCSC didn’t even use a grading system; professors would write student summaries giving feedback about performance and progress. I think they were kinda forced into giving grades due to pressure from other institutions (people pursuing work or graduate level education at other universities etc). I had one professor provide me a feedback summary and it was so nice; like she ACTUALLY knew each student and took the time to know their work.

TENACIOUS D! I unironically listen to their first album a lot lol. Weird Al, obviously. Suburban Lawns, the Aquabats, Reel Big Fish, Green Day (the album Dookie in particular), Presidents of the United States of America, Primus, Mr. Bungle, the Adicts, the King Kahn & BBQ Show, Nobunny, Weedeater, Spazz, Gravy Train!!!, the Pixies, GWAR, King Diamond, Busdriver, MF Doom, Talking Heads

Your mileage may vary with some of these; some don’t mean to have a funny shtick but I just find them funny personally

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!

What do you think makes people get so cynical? I just don’t understand it.

Damn I forgot that about Castro and I don’t know much about Lenin (yet), that’s wild that they would just ignore that to bully someone online. Pretty much everyone told him it’s a self serving idea. Link it felt insufferable and I wanna read and post that booklet now

Here is the article

I haven’t read the whole thing but it sure did make me wanna cry and quit my job lol

I just recently saw a couple of posts on reddit that blew my mind with how condescending and downright hostile some folks were to someone asking an honest question on the fucking communism101 sub. Basically the person asking a question about if being a lawyer would be a good profession to get into to assist people and they were basically told that they just wanted to live a cushy life and were self serving, unethical, and basically gave the impression that whatever good they wanted to do was just liberal fantasy. I felt so bad for OP especially since it was a communism for beginners sub. There was a similar post on the regular r/communism where OP got their ass chewed out too. I can see getting annoyed with those types of questions but good lord did they leave a bad taste in my mouth.

One person did post a pretty interesting article that has made me shift my perspective a bit but even in that they called social workers pathetic and like, how is that constructive at all?

Panty liners is honestly a brilliant idea! I used to go sans underpants but uh, tight jeans is not the jam for that. I think having multiple pairs of pants you rotate through+panty liners would be the best bet.

I’m not familiar with the history of US interest in Ukraine but that does not surprise me. As someone seeing the war happen and knowing it was against Russia I figured it was about the “noble fight against communism” but combined with the fact that an aim is also to be a large scale weapons manufacturer sounds like there is gonna be much much more Imperialism to do besides fighting Russia.

It just kinda tied things together for me yesterday learning about the natural resources in Gaza that Israel is likely after as well as conflicts like the Armenian genocide, the strengthening of US relations with other countries in the area, all of it

Also, since October 7th, the entire world has been watching Palestine. This is what had to be done in order to bring any overwhelming attention to the conditions that Palestinians have been living under since 1948 and prior to that honestly. I’ve been saying “What’s sad is that it has had to come to this” instead of focusing on Hamas bad with people.

I see what you’re saying. I didn’t intend to make you feel that you needed to explain yourself in the way you did here; I think after reading through your comments again I understood much more clearly where you were coming from, and I appreciate you expanding on that even further for my benefit. My mind isn’t changed completely, but you do make very good points that I’d like to reflect on. I also wasn’t under the impression that you were trying to make anyone feel bad, and I’m sorry if I came off that way after this last response. I think a lot of my questions and statements were more rhetorical, I wasn’t trying to challenge you or change your mind, genuinely. Sometimes the way I express myself can come off more confrontational than it’s meant to be (to the exclusion of my first comment to you that was a dick comment and I feel bad for that). Anyway I respect the disengagement, and I appreciate your effort especially if it was frustrating for you, wish it wasn’t

Oh my fucking god I just wrote out a big huge thoughtful response to what you said and to your other comments AND IT ALL GOT DELETED FUCK.

Ugh I really cannot bring myself to type it all up again but I definitely want to say: I wasn’t trying to engage in bad faith, and I’m sorry if I came off as inflammatory, I wasn’t trying to attack you but the language of your posts rubbed me the wrong way. Either way I do owe you an apology for that so my bad.

I went back and more carefully read through all of your posts. Over all, I definitely agree with your positions in general on exploitation, abuse, objectification, etc. I just disagree that the focus on sex work will ameliorate all of those problems as women and others are objectified and abused outside of sex work, that abuse wouldn’t stop if sex work were to stop, violence will be perpetrated in other ways. To me addressing misogyny is the bigger fish to fry as that could either make sex work obsolete, or make it into something safe where people can engage in it with actual consent and agency. But we have no idea what the outcome would be until we are in a position where the impositions of capitalism and the patriarchy are addressed. Also I did appreciate your points about women and misogyny and that got me thinking about women being willing accomplices to men in trying to perpetuate violent oppression against women in order to be “not like the others”. I also appreciated your point about treating a hobby as a job and that’s something I want to think about, and learn more about necessary vs unnecessary labor.

Trans-women are women and women are not your fetish or kink they are people my friend.

This kinda feels like an insinuation that I don’t think trans women are women and that’s not my position. I mentioned “people of different genders”, I didn’t single out trans women in that sentence.

edit: another thought: so I definitely believe that the voices of sex workers should be front and center in these conversations, but under communism, generally, it would be the voice of the greater majority that would dictate what is and isn’t good for the group, right? I would assume that the majority of sex workers would want to abolish it since many are forced either by another individual or by economic circumstance. In that case we can absolutely do without it, and that small minority that engage in it because they just enjoy it, should be able to sacrifice it for the betterment of the community.

Double edit: eesh I went back and re-read my comment and yeah that was a rude ass comment, embarrassing

Sorry, I didn’t mean to come off hostile but in re-reading what I wrote I can totally see that, I’ll try to do better moving forward.

To the first thing, I think I was framing this with the context that sex work is a creation of the patriarchy and serves to perpetuate misogyny, sexism and exploitation. In response to this, I would think that focusing on the patriarchy, re-educating men and providing a much bigger emphasis on dismantling those violent concepts, then the nature of sex work would be fundamentally changed. It may even resolve itself, since there wouldn’t be pressure, coercion, and potentially there would not be a want for it as it stands now.

I think some of the points that I was speaking to was not just in the comment that I replied to but within the whole thread. The points that you enumerated I’m absolutely in agreement with, make no mistake about that. There were points that I interpreted as having an undercurrent of misogyny, I wasn’t trying to claim that darkcalling was doing that intentionally but that’s how it felt to me.

lol good point. I do think that the effort placed on abolishing sex work is misguided though, I explain myself further in my reply to darkcalling. It’s probably super obvious but what other forms of work would be abolished?

Maybe more effort should be focused on banning misogyny and re-educating people who exploit others for their personal pleasure instead of putting all of the effort into infantiziling women and speaking for them as a monolith. It looks to me that the (rightful) contempt you harbor is actually more about patriarchal control and violence by men towards women. That’s the real issue. If that were dealt with, sex work in the huge, huge part would resolve itself, especially as long as there are abundant resources available for women to access. Maybe it will disappear completely, naturally.

Those who a third time in a situation where their material needs are met, where they have opportunities, where they’ve been given re-education and therapy choose to attempt to perpetuate it under that system however will get the iron fist. It will be merciless.

Women getting the iron fist, especially in a time where they HAVE been brain washed, as you say…Feels extremely misogynistic. I don’t often see women advocating and pushing or FORCING other women to get into sex work as this great, glamorous career. Why are you putting so much effort into saying this about women instead of focusing on violent, manipulative men who coerce women and do horrible things to them? This perspective just serves to perpetuate violence and misogyny to me.

Also men and people of different genders engage in sex work. Perhaps that’s brainwashing as well but just wanted to throw that out there.

Yeah, paternalism and stigmatization is usually what I see come out of these discussions within Marxist circles online. It’s always that drugs and sex work are inherently problematic in any form and that they wouldn’t be useful after the revolution, but there will always be a want and need if there are people willing or wanting to engage in the work to provide those things then why should it matter to anyone? Anyway that’s where I stand on it, it’s just when people start to infringe on others’ bodily autonomy and leaning into puritanism I get the ick

I’m curious how many people that respond to these types of posts actually consider themselves sex workers. I feel like having this debate without the voices of the people who participate in it front and center is pointless.