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@the-ideaist
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I'm asking this genuinely, as a 19 yo with no education in economics and a pretty surface level understanding of socialism: can you explain the whole Bananas discourse in a way someone like me might understand? In my understanding it's just "This is just a product we can give up to create better worker conditions and that's fine" but apparently that's not the full picture?
alright so some pretty important background to all this is that we're all talking about the fact that bananas, grown in the global south, are available year-round at extremely low prices all around europe and the USA. it's not really about bananas per so--the banana in this discourse is a synechdoche for all the economic benefits of imperialism.
so how are cheap bananas a result of imperialism? first of all i want to tackle a common and v. silly counterargument: 'oh, these ridiculous communists think it's imperialist for produce to be shipped internationally'. nah. believing that this is the communist objection requires believing in a deeply naive view of international traide. this view goes something like 'well, if honduras has lots of bananas, and people in the usa want bananas and are willing to pay for them, surely everyone wins when the usa buys bananas!'.
there are of course two key errors here and they are both packed into 'honduras has lots of bananas'. for a start, although the bananas are grown in honduras, honduras doesn't really 'have' them, because the plantations are mostly owned by chiquita (formerly known as united fruit) dole, del monte, and other multinationals--when they're not, those multinationals will usually purchase the bananas from honduran growers and conduct the export themselves. and wouldn't you know it, it's those intervening middleman steps--export, import, and retail, where the vast majority of money is made off bananas! so in the process of a banana making its way from honduras to a 7/11, usamerican multinationals make money selling the bananas to usamerican importers who make money selling them to usamerican retailers who make money selling them to usamerican customers.
when chiquita sells a banana to be sold in walmart, a magic trick is being performed: a banana is disappearing from honduras, and yet somehow an american company is paying a second american company for it! this is economic imperialism, the usamerican multinational extracting resources from a nation while simultaneously pocketing the value of those resources.
why does the honduran government allow this? if selling bananas is such a bad deal for the nation, why do they continue to export millions of dollars of banans a year? well, obviously, there's the fact that if they didn't, they would face a coup. the united states is more than willing to intervene and cause mass death and war to protect the profits of its multinationals. but the second, more subtle thing keeping honduras bound to this ridiculously unbalanced relationship is the need for dollars. because the US dollar is the global reserve currency, and the de facto currency of international trade, exporting to the USA is a basic necessity for nations like honduras, guatemala, &c. why is the dollar the global reserve currency? because of usamerican military and economic hegemony, of course. imperialism built upon imperialism!
this is unequal exchange, the neoimperialist terms of international trade that make the 'global economy' a tool of siphoning value and resources from the global south to the imperial core. & this is the second flaw to unravel in 'honduras has a lot of bananas' -- honduras only 'has a lot of bananas' because this global economic hegemony has led to vast unsustainable monoculture banana plantations to dominate the agriculture of honduras. it's long-attested how monoculture growth is unsustainable because it destroys soil and leads to easily-wiped-out-by-infection plants.
so, bananas in the USA are cheap because:
the workers that grow them are barely paid, mistreated, prevented from unionizing, and sometimes murdered
the nations in which the bananas are grown accept brutally unfair trade and tariff terms with the USA because they desperately need a supply of US dollars and so have little position to negotiate
shipping is also much cheaper than it should be because sailors are chronically underpaid and often not paid at all or forced to pay to work (!)
bananas are cheap, in conclusion, because they're produced by underpaid and brutalized workers and then imported on extortionate and unfair terms.
so what, should we all give up bananas? no, and it's a sign of total lack of understanding of socialism as a global movement that all the pearl-clutching usamericans have latched onto the scary communists telling them to stop buying bananas. communism does not care about you as a consumer. individual consumptive choices are not a meaningful arena of political action. the socialist position is not "if there was a socialist reovlution in the usa, we would all stop eating bananas like good little boys", but rather, "if there's a socialist revolution in the countries where bananas are grown, then the availability of bananas in the usa is going to drop, and if you want to be an anti-imperialist in the imperial core you have to accept that".
(this is where the second argument i see about this, 'oh what are you catholic you want me to eat dirt like a monk?' reveals itself as a silly fucking solipsistic misunderstanding)
and again, let's note that the case of the banana can very easily be generalised out to coffee, chocolate, sugar, etc, and that it's not about individual consumptive habits, but about global economic systems. if you are donkey fucking kong and you eat 100 bananas a day i don't care and neither does anyone else. it's about trying to illustrate just one tiny mundane way in which economic imperialism makes the lives of people in the global north more convenient and simpler and so of course there is enormous pushback from people who attach moral value to this and therefore feel like the mean commies are personally calling them evil for eating a nutella or whatever which is frankly pretty tiring. Sad!
tldr: it is not imperialism when produce go on boat but it is imperialism when produce grown for dirt cheap by underpaid workers in a country with a devalued currency is then bought and exported and sold by usamerican companies creating huge amounts of economic value of which the nation in which the banana was grown, let alone the people who actually fucking grew it, don't see a cent -- and this is the engine behind the cheap, available-every-day-all-year-everywhere presence of bananas in the usa (and other places!)
Ummm she's literally sensitive :/

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Coming out to nii-san
this is literally how it feels
Ragebaiting my fat dog? More like master baiting my fat hog!!!!!!!!
âď¸Great Hog is displeased by this.
The kingly pig looks taken aback by this statement. "You claim to be 'baiting' our kind?.. A master of it, no less - after all the trust we hsve placed in you?"
- Your relationship with the Hog Society đ is now Unfavourable.
-- Mud and Sludge --
grug dont have to change!

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This is a perfect time to read the brilliant and unforgettable graphic novel(s) Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, about growing up in Iran during and after the Iranian Revolution, and the rise of the oppressive theocracy that persists to this day.
Both graphic novels are available free online (Persepolis vol. 1, Persepolis vol. 2)
It also was adapted to a wonderful film (co-directed and co-written by the author) which is available to watch for free on Sundance Now (sign up for the free trial)
Minnesotaâs Giant Rainbow and Leather Pride Flags
June 28, 1998. Both flags measured approximately 50 feet wide and 75 feet long.
Friendly reminder that the leather flag predates almost every other flag. We owe this community to leather daddies and kinksters
In the era of corporate sanitization never forget it was leather daddies and S&M folks who protected some of the earliest pride parades.
anyway every time i post about ocd people start tagging the post like "wait this isn't normal?" and i always like to remind people that intrusive thoughts are normal. pretty much everyone experiences them. "what if i jumped off this balcony?" "what if i crashed my car right now for no reason?" "what if i yelled a curse word in the middle of this wedding?" everyone thinks these things from time to time. it's disordered thinking when the distress starts becoming intolerable.
"am i normal" is not as helpful question to ask as "are intrusive thoughts causing me frequent distress?" and "would my life be better if i could find a way to feel less distress/learn to tolerate the distress?"
millions and millions of people have ocd. having ocd is normal. you're normal. but what if you could feel better? what if living everyday in your own mind and body could be tolerable? is that something you want? need? these are questions to ask.
i just donât think âis dude gender neutralâ is that productive of a conversation because a word can be gendered and still used regardless of gender. i call my male friends girlypop and my female friends man but i donât think anybody would agree that those are somehow not gendered terms.
the real question is just âwould you be willing to apologize and stop using a word if somebody told you it made them uncomfortable?â the answer to which in a surprising number of cases is no mostly because it seems like overall ppl r more upset abt getting accused of transphobia than they are abt being transphobic
hate when people think the only archetype possible for a male sidekick to a female protagonist is a soft boi and/or himbo. like the implication there is that the only reason a man would ever defer to a womanâs authority is if he was a bumbling idiot. love male supporting characters who are smart and strong and confident and can step up when necessary but still kind and humble enough to let someone else take the lead most of the time
ok another good point here

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"many see as illegal"
Who knew taking land that isn't yours while killing civilians is illegal
"plans major push"
Even their correction is spineless
I donât know if this is an obvious take or a hot take, but I think people need to start re-framing feminism as the fight for body autonomy as opposed to whatever this second wave revival gender essentialist bullshit we have going on right now. Once you reframe it in this way, itâs easier to understand intersectionality and why cis women are not the only people who need feminism. The lack of body autonomy effects cis women, trans people, intersex people, disabled people, poc, homeless people, sex workers, etc. and your feminism needs to include and prioritise all of these groups of people (which will include men btw) because feminism is about autonomy, not about establishing a matriarchy. Body autonomy is the biggest threat to the patriarchy, both with reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and even the right to not be drafted into military services. Once body autonomy is established for everyone, the patriarchy no longer has a leg to stand on.
And body autonomy does include things that you donât personally like either. I was prompted to write this post after a series of bad takes from progressives, but one of them was re-hashing the Sabrina Carpenter album cover drama with âI donât think itâs conservative of me to think that the album cover is a bad look when weâve seen images of women being abused in this wayâ because I do actually think youâve failed to understand feminism by projecting your morals onto a woman who was consensually expressing her own autonomy just because she expressed it in a way that you didnât like or that made you uncomfortable.
Body autonomy also means unhealthy choices. Body autonomy also means regret rates. Body autonomy also means freedom of sexuality. Body autonomy also means mutilation. If you believe body autonomy has limitations and exceptions, then your feminism is most likely surface level.
TERFs are some of the biggest opponents to body autonomy, and if you find yourself thinking âoh people can do whatever they want with their bodies as long as it doesnât harm them or make others uncomfortableâ then you are far more susceptible to TERF propaganda than you think.
ooooh the radfems are BIG mad about this one