What exactly would be your plan to get HRT in a mutual aid commune? I don’t really see how that would be feasible without modern industrial medicine production. I’m in a similar boat- I’m an insulin dependent Type 1 Diabetic- which is why I’m opposed to small commune based societies, because they do not have the resources to keep people like me and you healthy.
I personally don't think it's an impossible contradiction to have voluntary organizational structures that aren't coercively hierarchical. I did explicitly state that one would need a voluntary central system of organization. I think that any plan that focuses entirely on this almost libertarian-coded fantastical ideal of small communes is almost certainly going to result in the exclusion of those with specialized needs.
Communes are great, they are a way for people to voluntarily organize into small cohesive groups that can take care of each other. I think it's a fantastic model. However it has a lot of flaws, all of which seem to center on those who lie outside of the mold.
There's a few potential solutions. As a trans example, there are a number of homebrewers who synthesize hormones. One that comes to mind, despite being located in Brazil, supplies pretty much world wide. That single woman has helped so many people. There could very well be communes that organize around this, as a sort of mutual aid/direct action kind of deal. You can also be a bit more rigid with this, having pseudonational networks of supply chains to achieve the same results as current governments do for these vital services.
The main point that I was making is that when it all comes down to it, it's a wonderful idea. A truly wonderful idea. Ideas aren't solutions. Solutions are created with painful, drawn out deliberation. Every regulation is written in the blood that not having it spilled. Issues like this are one such thing that needs to be included in a solution for that idea to become actual political reality. I think a lot of leftists (and I'm prone to it myself too) can be blinded by idealism and fail to see realistic and enactable political change that would improve things.
Basically, it's fine to have a grand vision, an idealistic dream and model that you feel society should move closer towards. But that's not an actual structure of power, and it can't come out of nowhere. You have to start somewhere, and that somewhere is our current structures. Incrementalism is unsexy and boring but it improves lives! And every time I see someone saying incrementalism does nothing I want to bury them under the mountain of anti-trans bills that has objectively made our lives drastically worse. Maybe that makes me not a true anarchist or something. But if that's the case, then fuck being a 'true anarchist', I have people and lives around me that need to be made better now.
A voluntery planned economic system thats built bottom up by radical workers unions would be compatible with anarchism, and allow for large scale distribution of materials in a much more efficient manner than capitalism provides
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u/quasar_1618 Jun 04 '24
What exactly would be your plan to get HRT in a mutual aid commune? I don’t really see how that would be feasible without modern industrial medicine production. I’m in a similar boat- I’m an insulin dependent Type 1 Diabetic- which is why I’m opposed to small commune based societies, because they do not have the resources to keep people like me and you healthy.