Nerd is my Gender

May 8

Not at all considered a food for the poor or the “trashy,” as it commonly is in the U.S., in Korea Spam is a luxury item. Spam can be a great gift for your boss or your business clients. The photo below shows Spam for sale at a luxury hotel. The set on the top shelf cost about $60 and the set on the second sells for about $42.
(via Spam: The U.S. and Korea)

Not at all considered a food for the poor or the “trashy,” as it commonly is in the U.S., in Korea Spam is a luxury item. Spam can be a great gift for your boss or your business clients. The photo below shows Spam for sale at a luxury hotel. The set on the top shelf cost about $60 and the set on the second sells for about $42.

(via Spam: The U.S. and Korea)

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May 11

The income inequality in the USA is right up there with Uganda and Ivory Coast. Nice.

(via Signs of the economic times)

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Nine things I wish economically privileged people in my life knew.

I’m not always going to “look poor”. If you see me drinking a beer at a local meetup, that’s because I was living on ramen noodles and bean burritos the rest of the week. If you see me driving my car to said event, that’s because I made room in my budget for rising gas costs by once again not purchasing any health insurance whatsoever for myself. If you see me wearing a new shirt, that’s because the pre-paid cell phone I carry with me is never used, ever. If you see me paying rent, that’s because I had to sacrifice paying day care costs, and thus custody of my only child.

That being said, read this:

classragespeaks:

I am poor, I exist, and I’m right here. Hi! Many people who meet and get to know me without knowing my background are rather surprised to find this out. It matters to me on a very personal level when people do things like make nasty comments or assumptions about poor people, or assume that everyone in a given space is wealthy, thereby erasing the fact that I exist and am present. There are better reasons to not be classist (namely: it’s just plain wrong) than worrying about whether a poor person will hear you, but assuming that I’m not poor or that poor people are not present adds insult to injury and creates another communication barrier.

I may not look like what you imagine poor people should look like- but neither do most poor people. I’m smart, well-spoken, and a careful dresser. I’m highly educated because of financial aid. I avoid doing certain things and remember to do others because I don’t want to “look poor” and be judged for that. Then again, the commonly held stereotypes of poor people- that we’re stupid, “trashy,” lazy, waiting for handouts instead of taking care of ourselves, and so on- are just that, stereotypes, not true assessments based in reality. Just because I don’t match the stereotype doesn’t even necessarily make me unusual, just one more of so many different faces of being economically underprivileged.

I need and deserve as much space to talk about my experiences as you do to talk about yours. Talking about money- especially money one doesn’t have- is considered crass and impolite, but I can’t be fully myself without bringing that up. I know it makes people uncomfortable sometimes, but honestly, that’s not a good enough reason to expect me to keep quiet. As much as anyone else does, I deserve the right to talk openly about my background, my challenges, the reasons behind decisions I make- the realities of my life.

Being poor has substantial, everyday, direct effects on my life, and if you spend time with me, you will have to deal with those effects. Nearly everything I do, every decision I make, is in some way affected by my financial status. If you’re close to me, you will watch me struggle with money and financial decisions on a daily basis. If you want to do something with me, it has to be something I can afford. If you give me advice or recommendations, you will have to take into account my budget, or else your attempt at help will just sound laughably insensitive. There’s no way around it.

Being poor also has a large indirect impact on me in terms of how people think of me and the community I come from. Stereotypes of poor people abound. People frequently assume that my parents are unintelligent, ignorant, and bad parents. They treat me as an anomaly, an escapee from a uniformly horrible situation that they can pity and make fun of. People who know me treat me as an exception to a classist rule, not realizing that their upholding of that rule allows people who don’t know me to stereotype and mistreat me. That’s the world I live in.

I don’t want your pity. For me, pity is one of the most hurtful sentiments I can experience. It assumes a really troublesome hierarchy; if you are able to pity me, you must be better than or above me in some way. Also, it’s completely useless, and doesn’t do anything to actually address or talk about the reality of my situation. It’s a copout, and it’s often a way to shut me up so that I stop “making people feel bad.”

Yes, I know full well that there are many people in this world who are worse off than me, but that doesn’t invalidate my experiences. I’m aware that I am privileged in many ways, and that in a broad view, I’m better off financially than many, many people. Between privilege and luck, I’ve found myself in a position where I will likely no longer be poor once I’m a full-fledged independent adult, and I’ve been thinking a lot about how to handle that in an ethical way. But that admission doesn’t make the substantial disadvantages that I have experienced and continue to experience disappear. They are still real, painful, and very important to my life.

Me saying that you are (economically) privileged doesn’t mean I’m calling you a bad person, that I want you to feel guilty, or that I don’t think you deserve to have a good life. I don’t go around wanting people to feel bad. In fact, I rarely bring up things like this- too rarely, probably- because I know that people will take it personally and get defensive. Being poor is so much a part of me that it’s very emotionally difficult to handle when people totally dismiss the idea that there are substantial, important differences between my experience and theirs. But I have a responsibility to challenge the ideas- often unspoken, but present everywhere- that wealthy people are morally and functionally superior to poor people, that poor people could be wealthy if they only worked hard, and that my background, my family, my current reality can be dismissed with choice insults and assumptions that I’ve brought this on myself. If that makes you feel bad about yourself and your behavior, well, it probably should.

If you can’t deal reasonably and respectfully with me being poor, I’m not going to be able to keep you in my life. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: I can never forget that I’m poor, or behave like I’m not poor. It is with me every moment, in everything I do and every decision that I make. If you constantly lean on classist stereotypes, if you insult my background, if you patronize and pity me, if you yell at me for “making you feel bad,” if you won’t let me talk about my financial struggles or get too uncomfortable to let me continue, if you forget every time that I can’t afford to do the things you want to do or don’t share your experiences and perspective- well, I’m sorry, but you’re not worth being around. I have no interest in spending time with someone who will not give me the space to be myself, or who cares more about their own zone of privileged comfort than respecting another human being.

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14
May 26

Genderfree Parenting and Class Privilege

Cross-posted from No Lords, No Masters.

I’ve you’ve been on the internets lately, you’ve probably heard about the parents who are raising their child Storm without an assigned gender. As a member of various online transgender communities, I’ve been overhearing a lot of “everyone should do this!” under the assumption that everyone can do this. First of all, what is “this”? In the words of Arwyn of Raising My Boychick:

To start with, let’s get it clear that what Witterick and Stocker are doing isn’t “hiding Storm’s gender” or “keeping the baby’s gender a secret”: someone’s gender, like their sexuality, is something which only that person can reveal for themselves. What it seems, from the stories I’ve read (and that’s a big caveat, given how distorted a person’s life can become through the filters of media), that this family is doing is declining to assign their third child a gender of “boy” or “girl”. And while others are free, should they see Storm’s diaper being changed while out and about, to peer at the baby’s genitals and make their own assignment based on Storm’s apparent sex, they’re not revealing the baby’s phenotypical sex, either, because in this culture, in which vagina = girl and penis = boy, to do so would be to assign the child a typical binary gender.

It became obvious to me rather quickly that they either have the ability to hide the child’s diaper-changings from others, or else they have the ability to influence those who do see to say nothing. This implies that they either are wealthy enough to only need one income, thus enabling one of the parents to stay with the child at all time; or else they have the privilege of being surrounded by people who are willing to “play ball” with them, as it were, and go along with their wishes to the letter. Now, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I don’t have either of these privileges. My child is frequently with grandparents and daycare workers, and I don’t even have custody anymore. Also, most people he’s surrounded by are rather conservative and wouldn’t go along with this even if I made my most convincing argument. They’d “sneek a peek” and then go with the penis-suggestive pronoun, and call me weird for protesting.

But a funny thing happens when I try to point out these simple facts, even among the transgender community: nobody seems to care. In fact, Arwyn is the only one who has even mentioned something similar:

I know that this is a path made easier by the fact that in most other respects, Storm accords with hir culture’s idea of the “default person” and hir family with the “default family”: apparently white, not visibly disabled, apparently middle class, the parents married and apparently cisgender, the children not adopted. While sexism and cissexism are hardly only middle class white people’s concerns, having privilege in these areas means this family are not being questioned about race and class and sexuality and dis/ability the way a more marginalized family would likely be, which frees up time and mental energy to approach gender and sexism, and to attempt to protect their child(ren) from the worst effects thereof, in this particular, culturally disapproved, way.

Thank you, Arwyn! And you know what? I’m tired of the pressure put on parents by others to be perfect. I’ve tried explaining to person after person “no, not everyone can raise their child this way, especially if they’re financially dependent on others to help raise the child, others who have different ideas about parenting”. But the reaction is always the same “don’t you realize the damage caused by raising children with a gender!” as if classism doesn’t come into this at all. I even had one woman tell me, in response to me pointing out that not everyone can afford to have a stay-at-home parent in the family, “that’s what welfare is for, so you can stay at home”. WTF?

I don’t need the guilt people try to lay on me about how I’m such a bad parent for binary gendering my child even though I’m genderqueer myself. No parent needs that.

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America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, ‘It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.’ It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: ‘if you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?’ There will also be an American flag no larger than a child’s hand – glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register. Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say Napoleonic times. Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves.

—Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

class rage speaks

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6
Jun 2

The proper attitude to be taken toward the perpetuation of poor types is that which has been attributed to Huxley. “We are sorry for you,” he is reported to have said; “we will do our best for you (and in so doing we elevate ourselves, since mercy blesses him that gives and him that takes), but we deny you the right to parentage. You may live, but you must not propagate.

The Early Days of Eugenics: A Scientific American editorial from 1911 praising the new science of eugenics also hints at the darker side of this philosophy.

This article may have been written 100 years ago, but make no mistake - there are still people today who would apply such a horrid philosophy to the poor, queers, autistics, trans peeps, people with disabilities, etc.

Pro-choice means the ability to choose parenthood, even when it is looked down upon.

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5
Jun 7

5 Things Nobody Tells You About Being Poor

5 Things Nobody Tells You About Being Poor:

You Get Charged for Using Your Own Money
There is an Industry That Profits by Keeping You Poor
No Credit Can be Just as Damaging as Bad Credit
Your Next Expensive Disaster is Always Around the Corner
You’re Always in Survival Mode

It’s true, it’s all true. I know from experience. :(

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fyeahpdp:

[Picture: Background: 8 piece pie style color split with red and teal alternating. Foreground: White guy with glasses and light shadow wearing a sweat shirt over a button down and short black hair. Has a smug, arrogant facial expression and crossed arms.
Top text: “I totally understand where you’re coming from about not having enough money.” Bottom text: “I mean, I don’t even have cable!”]

Said to my mom by a Sierra Club ~~telemarketer~~ phonebanker. Listen, asshole, when she says she doesn’t have enough money, she means “I do not have the money to join your elitist hipster club, because I am going into debt by buying my groceries, even though we’re on food stamps”. She does NOT mean “I won’t have the money to pay the cable bill if I join”. And when she says “I can’t afford it”, LET IT GO. Say “Okay, have a nice day!” and hang up. DON’T ask her 3 more times.

It’s not cool when people don’t understand poverty. However, a lot of these phone workers are being monitored and have to follow certain procedures in order to keep their jobs. They may be in a situation where it’s either work making calls or don’t have money for food. (Seriously, would you want to be a phone worker?) If you’re not the type who is willing to simply hang up on them, I’ve found that stating “I’m not interested” 3 times in a row will do the trick. They don’t want to waste time with someone who isn’t interested, since they probably have a quota to fill as well.

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7
Jun 27

Poverty Survival Techniques

Some of these techniques I have employed (like giving up soda and spreading out purchases) and some I haven’t (like stealing or damaging items). It’s a good reminder that reality isn’t as clean and pretty as we’d like it to be, and that sometimes it’s either live creatively or starve.

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5
Jul 2

Dumpster diver says: Trader Joe’s must stop wasting food

Some of the smaller stores, however, ditch perfectly edible food into dumpsters. The one I’m most familiar with is Trader Joe’s since it is, as the company’s motto says, my “friendly neighborhood store.” On many nights, my friends and I have filled cars with bags and bags of sprouted-wheat Ezekiel bread, fresh loaves of sourdough, packages of baby lettuce, cartons of eggs, whole chickens, and even a 12-pack of Irish Stout with only one broken bottle.

I enjoyed the fruits of my labor (literally), but think of how many hungry people could have benefited from that food if Trader Joe’s donated it instead of throwing it away. It’s why I started a campaign on Change.org asking Trader Joe’s to adopt a company-wide policy to end food waste at all of its 350+ stores. I hope you’ll join the more than 30,000 people who have already signed my petition.

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Typical.

microaggressions:

Whenever a waiter or waitress automatically gives the check to the male at the table.

This happens a lot. When I’m dining out on a date or in a very small group and don’t make it obvious that I’m the one paying (the Bencakes and I take turns), the server often hands the check to him without asking. But just as often, they’ll leave it in on the edge of the table without making assumptions, and I think that’s a sign of the times improving. Location counts too, as the assumption that the man is paying was far more common in rural Indiana than in urban St Louis.

(Source: microaggressions)

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This actually happened to me.

fyeahpdp:

[Picture: Background: 8 piece pie style color split with red and teal alternating. Foreground: White guy with light shadow and short light hair wearing a suit jacket over a button down shirt and red bow tie. Has a big-toothed smile and is talking with his hands.

Top text: “Times are bad, so we’ll have to start firing people.” Bottom text: “I’m just kidding!”]

My boss made this joke to a client while standing right in front of me. He is very wealthy, but I live paycheck-to-paycheck as I’m working my way through school.

Joking about how casually you can ruin my life isn’t cool, and it just makes me not trust you. Not very healthy for a workplace environment, methinks.

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iamwhoiamandidontgiveadamn:

nirak:

“Think Bigger: 3 billion dollar theft gets man 40 months, 100 dollar theft gets another 15 years.” - @JPBarlow

Once again from ross’s twitter.

To add to it: homeless man feels badly about what he did, turns himself in, gets 15 years for $100.

CEO steals $3B, gives NO fucks about the number of lives he has completely fucked up, gets 40 months.

Poor? America hates you.

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Money Makes Some Decisions for Us

classragespeaks:

exhibitnumber1:

QueerOctopus: They pay you less than a living wage to keep the cost of the product…

queeroctopus:

They pay you less than a living wage to keep the cost of the product down. So the only products you can afford are the ones that contribute to the oppression of those just like you. And you keep buying things at their low low prices, letting them say “hey, we’re only selling it this cheap and paying our employees this little because it’s what the customer wants!”. Because when you’re getting paid minimum wage behind the grill and a McDonalds burger costs about a quarter of an hours work, and something decent costs you three hours work, and you’re working 80 hours to make rent so you don’t have time to cook proper meals anyway, you have to buy the cheap shit they mass produce using your blood, sweat and tears, and the cycle continues. When the disability benefit adds up to about 3 quarters of the average rent for a bedsit slum in your area, they wonder why you work yourself sicker or commit fraud. When the bar has heating and your bedsit doesn’t and a pint of beer is only £2, they wonder why you drink.

And then these liberals, these yuppy liberals come to me and say, “hey, Cydne, why do you shop in places guilty of using child labor? Why do you eat McDonalds? Why don’t you shop in local stores, why don’t you go vegan, why don’t you live like I live?” When they’re earning £25,000+ a year and I can’t even reach £5,000, and they’re wondering why I’m more likely to pay 99p for a KFC snack wrap than £5 for a meal at the local organic hippy cafe? Are you kidding me? And you’re wondering why I eat meat, when a pack of vegan sausages is £3 and a pack of cheap pork sausages are £1, and I’m having to work out what I can eat while autistic?

And that’s the real crime we commit, isn’t it? Living-while-poor, the greatest crime, to both liberals and conservatives alike. One side demonizes us for being lazy and stealing from the government and having high rates of crime, the other demonizes us for not being able to live as liberally as they do, because if we hate the system so much, why do we contribute to it so much? Because they don’t give us the choice not to. Because they push us into this corner where it’s between buy cheap shit from disgusting companies, or go without shoes and food.

And if you dare to chastise us for the choices we make to survive, you better work out how to get us into a situation where we don’t have to buy from these companies to survive, because no matter how much change you dropped in the donation bucket at Glastonbury this year, no matter how many wrist bands you wear, no matter how much shopping you do at charity stores for your thrift store chic look, I’m still poor.

Powerful and true.

I’ve had the good fortune to mostly know people (through Tumblr, especially) who are sensitive to how financial limitations can influence things like wanting to buy ethically made clothing, or eat vegan, or otherwise constrain one’s own choices in service of a particular ethical consideration. Knowing these people has broadened my understanding and led me away from stereotyping all vegans or all people concerned with ethical clothing as inherently classist or ignorant. However, I’ve spent enough time among wealthy liberal or even radical-identified people to have seen the opposite as well: people who care deeply about a particular social issue, which is fine in itself, but who out of simple ignorance or downright classism fail to consider how others’ choices are constrained by poverty and oppressive systems, as the OP describes.

I admire and support those who work to live in a way that is more humane and less oppressive, even when (as with some arguments in favor of vegetarianism) I don’t necessarily agree with their assessments of what is necessary. I especially admire those who can do so on a tight budget, knowing from my own experiences how difficult that can be, and in deciding for myself how I want to eat and what I want to buy, I often find the suggestions and information they provide useful. But I find it incredibly exhausting to be around or listen to people who have (legitimate) concerns about ending oppression on a large scale, but fail to incorporate an understanding of oppression as it works with regard to the people right in front of their faces.

This is why, if somebody asks me, I’m very happy to give them tips on how I’m able to be vegetarian on a budget. But this is my life, and my income. Money makes decisions for all of us that we’d rather do differently if we had the change.

(Source: inflateablefilth)

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5
Jul 10

My fridge is so full I have to reach way back
And my sports car doesn’t even have an audio jack
My laptop’s battery is low but my charger is over there
I can never find the right lid for my Tupperware
I woke up at noon, do I eat breakfast or lunch?
I don’t like organic milk and I don’t have fruit punch
My neighbor put a password on their wi-fi
And the freezer makes the ice cream hard to scoop, why try?
My hot water ran out in the shower, which sucks cause I was only in there for half an hour
The other side of my pillow is not much cooler
There’s no measure for inches or feet on this ruler (what’ the heck’s a decimeter!)
Something just beeped and I don’t know what it was:
What is my Roomba, my Convection oven or just Google Buzz
There’s some cereal left but not enough to make a bowl
I hate replacing batteries on my Wi remote control
People keep texting me when I’m playing Tiny Wings
My cleaning lady is vacuuming I can’t hear a thing
I didn’t read ‘Shake Well’ now I feel like I missed out
When I opened my birthday card no money fell out
I meant to turn on the light but it was the disposal
My Vespa’s in the shop, now how can I be mobile
Net flicks is suggesting things I already seen
And my suit is too fancy for the washing machine
There’s a pebble in my shoe, I have to stop and shake it
I have to add water to this cup cake mix and then bake it?
My pillow is too soft and I have too many sheets
And what the heck do I do with all these Starbucks receipts
My walking closet door is kind of hard to close
And my private school teacher calls my rap songs prose
My fridge doesn’t have a touch screen its a first world issue
Killed a Spider with a dollar cause I didn’t have a tissue.

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