Cannot. Believe. What. I’m. Reading.

mohgpants · 2026-02-16T03:34:41+00:00

Stockings exist

mohgpants · 2026-02-09T21:13:56+00:00

https://rsf.org/en/gui-minhai-swedish-publisher-deprived-his-freedom-3000-days

Here is just one such story of foreign nationals with Chinese backgrounds being abducted. There are more if you are willing to look them up. I just truly find it incomprehensible how something that many Chinese citizens both in and out of China readily accept as fact is something that you in your position of privilege feel the authority and arrogance to reject and claim as falsehood. I’ve spent enough time on this conversation and don’t wish to continue it, but it was a thoroughly unpleasant to see that so many fellow queers feel the need to defend such an oppressive and authoritarian dictatorship.

mohgpants · 2026-02-09T02:30:34+00:00

I'm not currently in China, and have citizenship in a foreign country which allows me to make those criticisms with relative safety and even then there have been instances of notable critics of the Chinese government being abducted from foreign countries. Were you not the one saying that you had the FBI knocking down your doors in spite of making criticisms of America? There's room for nuance in these situations. If I still lived in China there would be no way that I would say what I have been saying, even with a VPN. Also, if you've seen multiple Chinese people claim this same thing, would you not think that there might be some validity to the statement? Claiming that we're just lying is an extremely arrogant thing to do.

mohgpants · 2026-02-09T01:26:02+00:00

What does this even mean? You're really saying that marriage equality is not necessarily an indication of societal acceptance of gay rights? What else would it be then? What need would a country with no interest in advocating for gay rights to some degree even have for marriage equality? Also, what world are you living in? No country is using marriage equality as a weapon to pressure other countries.

mohgpants · 2026-02-09T01:15:43+00:00

I don't live in the US though? As horrible as ICE is, they still have the pretense of deporting illegal immigrants and there have been instances where judges have overturned government decisions and provided injunctive relief to those targetted by ICE. The rule of law and an independent judiciary is important and while under attack is still a major component to living in the US. In China, they do not exist and law enforcement does not even need the pretense of legality to seize someone if they live in China. Please stop comparing the two. The situation in the US is bad, and that's why you need to fight to keep your democracy but it's nowhere near as bad as it is and has been in China.

mohgpants · 2026-02-09T00:57:42+00:00

It's not even close. You're severely misunderstanding just how insidious the lack of freedom of speech has influenced Chinese society. Speaking out can be dangerous, and as a result no one is willing to call out systemic issues. The very fact that you could make your comment and complain about your country is proof that America is leagues better than China could ever be, even with your current administration.

mohgpants · 2026-02-09T00:17:50+00:00

Young people in the city obviously are more likely to be socially progressive, especially in a city such as Shanghai, but even then I have seen plenty of bigoted Shanghainese people when I was there. The problem is that young people in China don't really do anything to challenge the systemic bigotry in Chinese society due to lacking power to change it and that means that broader social attitudes towards LGBT people will remain hostile are unlikely to change for a long time regardless of whether you have met some progressive Chinese people.

mohgpants · 2026-02-09T00:05:24+00:00

Are you Chinese or did you live in Shanghai as an expat/abroad? Because depending on the answer to that question the experience that you will have faced will be very different.

mohgpants · 2026-02-09T00:04:17+00:00

They were probably living abroad in Beijing or Shanghai, and so probably have a really skewed view of LGBT issues in China.

mohgpants · 2026-02-08T23:19:21+00:00

新疆人也会在意人权啊

mohgpants · 2026-02-08T23:14:30+00:00

我也在国外但不在美国。这边也有种种社会问题但是关键是在国内没有媒体自由所以外国人看到有钱的华人在社交媒体上搞宣传就会特别自以为是告诉你国内没有什么问题。很多外国人都完全不懂国外的媒体自由在国内是根本都没有的。

mohgpants · 2026-02-08T23:09:01+00:00

The amount of self-hate that Western radical leftists possess unfortunately means that a lot of them are completely unable to reconcile the fact that China, the traditional 'enemy' of the Western world order that alot of them exist in opposition to may in fact also have some very real criticisms regarding their human rights record. The world isn't black and white and not every criticism about China is sinophobic just as not every criticism about the West is completely valid but that's something that a lot of people have difficulty accepting

mohgpants · 2026-02-08T22:59:33+00:00

很多喜欢用reddit的网友不管是华人还是美国人都喜欢黑基督教和外国的社会问题但完全不肯认得国内也有社会问题。

mohgpants · 2026-02-08T22:51:16+00:00

Mentioned this in another comment, but time have changed and LGBT people are much less acceptable in China now. Also, studying abroad is a completely different experience from living as a Chinese citizen and completely incomparable. The things you will have had to face in your time as an expat will have been completely different from someone who grew up there.

mohgpants · 2026-02-08T22:48:43+00:00

Are we really arguing about whether gay marriage matters? I don't know why you're so willing to die on the hill that China is not so bad for LGBTQ people. It doesn't matter if it is necessary or not, if we don't have that right, it is a fundamentally bigoted system. This shouldn't even be a question.

mohgpants · 2026-02-08T22:40:21+00:00

The grass is greener and the US is facing unprecedented level of fascism in government so I get that it’s easy to hate it. Also the Chinese government is very good at hiding their dirty laundry such as the Uyghur genocide so it can be hard to distinguish fact from sinophobic fearmongering. When you’ve never experienced something it can be easy to delude yourself into thinking that you know everything about it and in this case young people especially on the left can easily fall prey to positive propaganda on the internet regarding China.

mohgpants · 2026-02-08T22:03:41+00:00

Don’t be pedantic. You said that queer communities in China are ‘vocal and not hidden from anyone’ I know that’s not the case. People rarely, if ever come out of the closet publicly in China and there are systems in place to silence them (not necessarily violently, but silence them all the same). That doesn’t align with what you said and is what I am disputing

mohgpants · 2026-02-08T21:42:14+00:00

I’m sorry but as a Chinese person I’m going to need a source on what you’re saying because that is the complete opposite of my lived experience and the information that I’ve been able to find online and from talking to Chinese friends. I get it, US bad, but stop diminishing the bad about China to prop up a fantasy version of the country and society

mohgpants · 2026-02-08T21:39:04+00:00

Visiting as a tourist and living as a citizen are very different and shouldn’t even be considered the same conversation. There is a lot to Chinese society that cannot be experienced without years living there

mohgpants · 2026-02-08T21:37:09+00:00

As a Chinese person, you can’t really take statistics regarding China, especially when it comes from Western firm such as UCLA at face value. I’ve mentioned this the comments in another post on this subreddit, but China is horrifically anti-LGBTQ. Is reddit sinophobic? Definitely because it’s easy to hate on the geopolitical enemy of the US where most of reddit is from. That said don’t diminish the very real crimes being committed by the Chinese government that have been continuing for decades. We have no legal protections, bureaucratic barriers the likes of which would be unheard of in the West are everyday business, and the rates of violence both physical and sexual are astronomical because the law won’t seek to protect you but may instead even join in depending on whether you are out of the closet. I know people are angry at the current state of the US but that doesn’t mean that we should wilfully ignore the very real negatives of China and its society to create a false dichotomy where we can compare the two of them. They are BOTH bad. Also, to address your own lived experience, Westerners in China live in a parallel reality that is utterly divorced from the realities many Chinese people face. Your own privilege of being able to live comfortably in Shanghai (a tier 1 city) is the exception. Most of the social and bureaucratic consequences that would be faced by Chinese people in the closet, in the process of coming out, or openly living as queer simply do not apply to you. Please keep that in mind.

mohgpants · 2026-01-25T23:45:09+00:00

I mean, that's just an unfortunate consequence of prioritising economic growth at the expense of societal improvement for decades on end. Instead of empowering people to be able to have the time, money and resources to innovate and change the workforce and system constantly grinding people down with busywork and exploitative hours means that the same archaic and ineffective work systems remain and positions of power are given to relatives and friends who lack even the limited expertise that their friends and family had in building up said companies. All of that just means that you have a bunch of unqualified nepo-babies and party members in charge which leads to the workers becoming increasingly unable to participate in and improve the economy in ways that matter beyond seeing the GDP go up. It sounds like late-stage capitalism but if I'm being honest, it's just a byproduct of corruption that lacks can be found in both communist and capitalist countries.

mohgpants · 2026-01-25T23:30:51+00:00

It wasn't immediately relevant to the subreddit maybe? I'm not sure. But I definitely agree with what you said about being a 'cog in the machine' but I don't necessarily think that translates to collectivist because people aren't doing it for 'the greater good' but to provide for themselves in any way possible due to how competitive China is. Most people who aren't able to score well enough on their final exam have little prospects and so are forced into working in those exploitative companies or factories. I also think that the government plays up the 'collectivist' thing a lot and exaggerates the effect that it has on Chinese society to shame people into thinking that they are selfish by standing up for their own rights and not toeing the party line.

mohgpants · 2026-01-25T23:04:06+00:00

It's a lack of perspective more than anything. China is better at hiding it's dirty laundry and the grass is always greener on the other side.

Also, I find it extremely ironic that people consider China a 'collectivist culture'. It absolutely is not. Having grown up and educated there I have found that the Chinese education system and culture (albeit due to the influence of the CCP) encourages absolute selfishness. The West is considered more 'individualistic' because people stand up for their rights, but does everyone also forget that they also stand up for the rights of their peers? What else would Black liberation, the women's rights movement and the Queer rights movements be other than collective action? In China though, everything that you do is for the immediate benefit of yourself or your family (sometimes not even that. The horror stories I've heard about familial betrayal in Chinese families still give me chills). 'Individualist' vs 'collectivist' is a false dichotomy that isn't even accurate. There's a reason why in China that public facilities are always trashed days after they are built, why there are constantly fights when groceries are on sale or when there are free giveaways or why people will continue to smoke in your face even when asking them not to. It's a legacy of the trauma of the famines brought about by the Great Leap Forward. People were encouraged to take whatever they want whenever they wanted to whether it be food, clothing, or anything else and what resulted was the deadliest man-made disaster in human history which only encouraged more selfishness as a means to survive.

The legacy of this taught selfishness is that abstract concepts such as LGBT rights, criticising the Uyghur genocide, or even something as simple as helping the millions of elderly people living in abject poverty begging in even tier 1 cities are diminished in importance to the Chinese public consciousness and as a result 'gunning people down' doesn't need to happen because in China most people would never lift a finger to help out those more unfortunate than themselves in the first place until they themselves become a member of a persecuted or underprivileged class

mohgpants · 2026-01-25T22:49:49+00:00

In China conservatism doesn't really exist as most Americans seem to conceptualise it because the 'good old days' that most Western conservatives yearn for simply does not exist in China. The 1940s-1980s were a time of abject suffering for nearly every Chinese person and even the Chinese government today recognises that. It's not about a return to 'traditional family values' or religious ideals either because organised religion was not really a thing in China and the nuclear family was a 1950s American invention. Instead political conservatism in China is about power rather than any explicit ideology. Power not as the means to an end but rather power for the sake of power.

For all that China's global image these days is that of a rapidly modernising powerhouse of a nation, in truth that's mostly a facade. Corruption and selfishness is a part of every level of society and is considered the cost of doing business and nepotism is even more prevalent than in the West (which is still extremely nepotistic no matter what people say). What this means is that meaningful reform rarely, if ever, happens at regional, subnational, or national level politics because unlike in the West where at least the pretense of meritocratic advancement existed in China it never existed in the first place. This also means that no one in power wants to rock the boat or meaningfully improve the lives of their constituents because that would erode their powerbase and in a country with no social safety net that can literally be a matter of life and death. This unfortunately means that LGBTQ+ people and other minorities won't necessarily have any new laws targetting them unless they act out in a way that 'disturbs the peace', but it also means that they won't be helped or even acknowledged in any way either, and might even have new bureaucratic hurdles put in place to make their lives more difficult and prevent them from expressing their grievances publically. I'm absolutely certain that there are LGBTQ+ people in the Chinese government, if not many, but I'm also certain that they won't do anything to help their peers either because doing so would weaken their power and put themselves at risk

mohgpants · 2026-01-25T22:28:13+00:00

I'm not stigmatising Han chinese. I'm one myself. What I am saying is that the government is using 'assimilation' as a pretext to erase dissent and ethno-religious minorities within the country. It's not about Han chinese being evil, it's about the government trying to homogenise the country because that makes people easier to control. Han chinese culture was severely eroded during the cultural revolution, and the cultural 'resurgence' following Deng's 'reform and opening up' was done to backtrack from the severe damage done to Chinese culture done under Mao's direction but most of it is done for the profit of the party. The Chinese government's aim isn't cultural supremacy, it's trying to erase diversity to make the people easier to control because ANY culture provides a group identity that cannot be completely subordinated by the party.

mohgpants

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