this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2025
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Having only the information that the US government said it is happening we can safely assume it didn't. They probably accidentally report true things sometimes but that would be an outlier if so.
Oh, well, I guess if you've never talked to a single queer person from Russia or Chechnya you can safely assume anything you would like to be true. And this attitude is exactly why I made my initial comment too.
I'll doubble down. I have no doubt a thing like that has happened. However I would bet money that the RFA reporting on that incident is meaningfully different enough as to make any attempt at analyzing meaning from it misleading and useless.
I'm struggling to understand your second sentence, sorry. Is it that it might have happened but we shouldn't use RFA as a source for trying to analyse/understand it?
He's doubting RFA's reporting, not that China has never committed a human rights violation.
If your question is "how can we, the West, analyze and critique this" then the answer is that we cannot based on biased sources
I am not "the West", never been further West than Kaliningrad. I speak Chinese and I can absolutely investigate this further but, as I said in my original comment, I am not mentally prepared right now.
All I am trying to say here is this: denying an issue that might actually exist just because Western media reported on it is cope. Yes, Western media will look for the worst all the time and invent shit if they cannot find anything. No, that doesn't mean that the worst cannot happen. If you don't know, say that you don't know.
I'm saying this is impossible to properly dissect with this source. I'm not attacking you lol, I'm trying to explain the disagreement
My bad for assuming you're from "the West" though. It's a predominantly English speaking forum so that's the baseline I was working with
Sorry, I didn't mean to sound so hostile/defensive. I understand why you assumed I would be American like most users on this website. It just happened so many times at this point – sometimes with people lecturing me on the country I live/lived in lol – that it got a bit old.
It's fair.
Jumping to assume the most nefarious possible motive based on a western propaganda outlet is silly.
Nobody has said it is impossible that China has engaged in persecution of LGBTQIA+ people. But we have pointed out assuming this is an example of discrimination, based on a piece of propaganda, from an outlet with the mission to make China look as bad as possible, without anything close to independent corroboration, is foolish.
I don't think it's silly to "jump" to queerphobia as an explanation for these arrests, based on my experience living in China and what I know of queer history around the world. I think it's silly to dismiss this explanation based on the news source though, and dismissing is what some people in this thread are trying to do.
All I know is if you assume the opposite of whatever the US State Department or it's affiliated media outlets says, you will be right more often than not.
State Department says "Evil SeeSeePee hates the gays and so they arrested a bunch of them" - I will assume the opposite until and unless credible reporting comes out to corroborate the propaganda outlets claims.
I think this is just as reactionary as lib Marvel movie thinking, just in the other direction.
Unfortunately I agree with the person you are talking to here. You have to start at a baseline, and there is no such thing as 'true neutrality'. You are overall better off when doing a media investigation assuming that any apparatus of the U.S. media arm has misrepresented any given story, particularly when it comes to reporting about China and Chinese law and punishment. Doesn't mean it's always the correct position to take sans research, but it isn't a reactionary position for me because it comes from years of doing this kind of media backtracking. It's mostly pragmatism at this point, as they can spew lies faster than I can investigate them.
It is applied as a general rule of thumb, but also specifically in this context.
Edit: Not to contradict your experience at all though, There is plenty of queerphobia in China, as you and plenty of others I have talked to on the subject have said. It wouldn't be surprising if there was some sort of crackdown on slash-fics, but how widespread is it, is it actually a national mandate (is it 'China' or just some specific regional politicians bugaboo), is it targeting specifically queer artists or just obscenity in general, these are the kinds of questions I wouldn't put it past RFA to completely and purposefully underreport.
I think not trusting any bourgeois media outlet as a baseline is the correct position. You added an extra bit about pragmatism in the edit and it's a very good point as well, there is not enough time and otherwise capacity to investigate everything.
However, complete dismissal of the content on a public forum under a post in which the OP asked the forum to help them understand the content is where it becomes reactionary. This is no longer the individual "I don't have time for this so I will not engage", this is now collective content in and of itself. And in this content, 10 different people are telling me that RFA is an unreliable source – like I didn't know lol – while nobody is addressing my original point. This is what hexbear as a whole has to say about this topic and I am sorry but this is reactionary.
I don't think most people here would disagree with the sentiment of not trusting bourgeois news sources in general. This issue is that pretty much all the news we get, especially from China, is from bourgeois sources, either inside or outside of China.
In that case the difference between 'reactionary' politics and 'materialist' politics is essentially one of clarity of explanation. Which I am not necessarily disagreeing with, as I think Mao discusses that issue in 'combatting liberalism', just thinking in post.
My point is that I would guarantee that pretty much everyone here is very likely operating under something very close to my logic as it is logic generated by the experience of being a terminally online Western leftist. They just aren't generally as charitable in expressing it as I am.
In my personal understanding, the longstanding 'hexbear' (not to place words in people's mouths, but this was the sentiment in r/chapotraphouse back on reddit in like 2019) opinion is that the actual truth value of the article is irrelevant, especially if you live in the West. The point is not to raise awareness to help queer people in China, it is to manufacture consent for whatever strange foreign policy tact the government is hoping to pull. Therefore, no further investigation is even necessarily warranted. We know where it is comes from, we know why it is coming from there, what else would you have us do, does awareness of the truth even matter for us? So people just shit-post and tell others to ignore it. And you are correct, that might be a reactionary thing to do, but it has been inherent to the posting culture of these people since before hexbear was even around.
Thank you, this was genuinely insightful and I did not know this about hexbear culture at all, which caused several similar clashes already. I guess I'll just stick to trans mega then because this is not for me and I think it's pretty uncool to think this way even.
Absolutely. You are welcome.
You are more than welcome anywhere here, but there is absolutely a dominant posting culture outside the trans mega that was developed specifically to combat online Western liberal brain worms, which it is very, very good at. Posting combat is not about being excruciatingly specific and correct, it is about dunking as hard, and fast, as possible, with overwhelming force.
'Chapo-posting' shone brightest when we were essentially predators, singling out bad takes from the packs of redditors, striking fear into their hearts through things like the n-word bot. This is a reduced, if still mildly effective form.
Unfortunately, like any vestigial organ, while it occasionally has it's uses for the wandering liberal/fascist, it more often than not causes friendly fire these days. That said, it would be a shame to lose it entirely, like killing the last white rhino, and it was fighting a losing battle so I stopped advocating for less dunks on fellow posters years ago. Gotta treat a forum like a forum, no matter the forum.
Glad to be of service.
I think uncritically swallowing US propaganda without any additional research makes you a convenient lapdog of the empire.
Edit. This is harsh and I have edited my comment. Regardless. I will not assume homophobic intent based souly on a single propaganda piece. If actual evidence of maliciousness exists I am happy to take it into consideration; but if Voice of America said the sky is blue I would look out a window to confirm.
I think I am doing the opposite of uncritically swallowing anything. I said I'm not going to investigate and what I meant is that I'm not going to write an effortpost after multiple days of research. I, of course, did do the bare minimum of checking that other news outlets are also posting about this and these arrests are indeed happening before saying anything.
Now, about phobic intent. This is exactly what my very-very first comment was about! I am queer and I know a lot about queer history. I know it happens very often that there is some rule that technically applies to everyone but is applied much more strictly when it comes to queer people. I know cishet people always say this isn't happening. This is why, if Xi himself called me right now and said that they have no such intent, I would struggle to believe him. And this is what I was trying to point out. Unfortunately, nobody engaged with this point and instead everyone is trying to prove that I am an RFA koolaid drinker, and I think this is reactionary.
P.S. Your initial comment was alright, I've heard worse towards me here <3
Yes. I am saying the reporting of RFA is specifically removed from context to the extent that if they have a story about a true event reading it will likely lead you to an incorrect conclusion. So in effect any story you see there is fake.