another day, another dollar, another instance of wanting to write a long post calling out the 2015 discourse’s massive, massive classism problem but not wanting to invite the wank and criticism it would induce
but in short: the rural poor are not your punching bags for jokes about homophobia, trump supporters, and fat ugly americans, and poor people as a whole are grossly underrepresented in talking about marginalization and are not included in discussions about the issues that affect them directly. and a massive part of that comes from there not being a vanguard of like, Poor Academics the way that there are Feminist Academics and Queer Academics and Black Academics and so forth. every other institutionally marginalized group is represented in academia but because of the inherent lack of opportunity to pursue higher education that comes along with being poor, poor people’s voices aren’t really heard to the same degree.
not to mention that structural and institutional poverty is a problem that can only really be solved by politicians, and the problem is that right wing politicians have a vested interest in keeping poor people poor and uneducated so that they will continue to vote against their own interests and effectively continue to marginalize themselves, and meanwhile said conservative politicians keep their jobs and nothing changes. and even well-meaning leftist economists can’t do anything about it.
and MEANWHILE, youth activism is so intently focused on gender and race to the exclusion of class because most activists are college students, who have not really had to deal with the effects of Poverty with a capital P. see also: the difference between being poor and being broke. and activist language policing is so inherently classist in the first place because it serves to exclude and silence anyone who doesn’t have an academic background or the free time to read blog after blog on the internet to figure out why, exactly, using that word or that asterisk is so offensive and makes you such a terrible person even if your intent is, actually, good. so much of activism requires a significant time investment and a certain level of education that people who work minimum wage jobs and have families just cannot afford. so because they’re insufficiently educated, they’re regarded as insufficiently oppressed or treated like they’re actively part of the problem.
(not to mention the internet’s obsession with degrading service workers who are employed by problematic – ugh that word, but it’s the one that fits – companies. “we went to party city and threw all the racist costumes on the floor!” “we vandalized the ‘girl toy’ and ‘boy toy’ signs at target!” literally nothing enrages me more than this.)
see also: the co-option of the term “emotional labor,” which originated as a phrase coined to describe the mental and physical toll of the requirement for service industry workers to display cheerful, positive emotions toward customers, which has been bastardized by middle-class feminists to refer to standard politeness and talking about feelings within any form of relationship, be it with a friend, significant other, or parent.
i could go on and on. i won’t, because i already wrote way more than i intended. it’s a massive, massive intersectionality fail. i’m just so tired of it.
edinburgh, 2019
(by @SarcasticRover on Twitter, I think)
The commendable desire to reduce conflict with bears has a long and distinguished pre-history.
If you’re an adult, do the stuff you couldn’t as a kid.
Like, me and my sister went to a museum, and they had an extra exhibit of butterflies. But it cost £3. So we sighed, walked past, then stopped. We each had £3. We could see the butterflies. And we did it was great. We followed it up with an ice-cream as well because Mum and Dad weren’t there to say no.
I was driving back from a work trip with 2 other people in their early 20s, and we drove past a MacDonalds. One of the others went “Aww man, I’d love a McFlurry.” And the guy driving pulled in to the drive through. It was wild. But it was great.
I went to a park over the weekend and I was thinking “Man, I’d love to hire one of those bikes and cycle round the park.” It took me a few minutes to go “Wait, I can hire one of those bikes!”
I guess what I’m saying is, those impulsive things you wanted to do as a kid - see the dinosaur exhibit, play in the fountains with the other kids, lie in the shade for 2 hours - you can do when you’re an adult. You have to deal with a whole lot of other bull, but at least you can indulge your inner 8 year-old.
And did you know that talking like a pirate derives from the dialect in a certain part of England that was a particular hotspot for, and exporter of, pirates? The “West Country” I think it’s called. In all probability you could go there and they’re still all talking like pirates
I said this long ago, but it is still true, and is posted here because you might need this knowledge.
So Delta flight 302 flew in to San Juan, picked up passengers, and threaded one arm of Irma on the way out. The pilot basically said “hold my beer” and took on a hurricane.
I am not entirely convinced that Poe Dameron was not flying this plane, to be honest.
You can read the Twitter thread here.
Also like, I think people treated it as some form of bad faith argument to say “when you always use hyperbolic language, you dissolve any meaning your words have and make the words no longer actually useful to describe or even condemn the thing they refer to.”
But lol it’s true. Like that’s 100% accurate and nothing you hear hysterical woke people say can actually have any rhetorical weight because you never know if them using the word “pedophile” refers to some kindof fanfic nonsense or a 30-year-old dating a 25-year-old; or whether they’re talking about actual child sexual abuse.
When I’m a “literal nazi” for saying that the word ‘elite’ is not an antisemitic slur (lol), then I have no way of knowing who is actually being referred to by the word “nazi”. It could apply to basically everyone.
You do not have to be valid.
You do not have to scroll through your notes
For a hundred hours repenting
You only have to let the problematic animal of your body love what it loves.
“Sir – that was my emotional support archduke!”