Nerd is my Gender

1
Feb 24

Response to the “Religious Antagonist”

In his latest episode, Mike approaches a homeless man and offers him $20 to scratch the word “God” off the sign he is holding. The man refuses. Mike questions the man’s rationality. Why is he refusing real money for a ‘fairy tale’? The man’s wife gets involved and also refuses. Mike engages them both. Supposed hilarity ensues as Mike tries to get the couple to give up their faith in a higher power for the temptation of $20.

I’m sorry, Mike, I don’t think this was the reaction you were expecting when you sent this to us but I think this is a cruel, cold and pointless tactic and I am struggling hard to understand why you think this is a) meaningful or b) something we’d appreciate.

…

Humanists strive to affirm the dignity of every individual. People without homes are not our props. They are not our cute little visual aids. They are people. Why is that so difficult to grasp?

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3
Feb 24

I am a Taxpayer too!

Attention all US citizens: I am a taxpayer too! I’m not taking “your” money by lawfully requesting government assistance. But since I’m nice, I’ll make you deal. I’ll stop taking “your” money when you stop funding wars with mine.

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15
Mar 25

So that's what they mean by the “War on Poverty”

Minnesota Republicans are pushing legislation that would make it a crime for people on public assistance to have more $20 in cash in their pockets any given month. This represents a change from their initial proposal, which banned them from having any money at all.

Oh, well that’s only slightly less evil. How good of them.

The bill also calls for unconstitutional residency requirements, not allowing the debit card to be used across state lines and other provisions that the Welfare Rights Committee and others consider unacceptable.

Buechner testified, “We’ll leave you with this. It is not right to punish a whole group because of the supposed actions of a few. You in this room could have a pretty rough time if that was the case. It is not right to stigmatize and dehumanize women living the hard life of trying to raise children while living 60% below the poverty level. It is not right to use racist, bumper-sticker hate to inflict human misery for political gain.”

Oh yeah, well how else would the Tea Party function? Didn’t think of that, now did you!

(Source: fightbacknews.org)

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2
Apr 11

Rex Sinquefield is at it again!

That’s right, the same rich asshole who is trying to kill St. Louis is also attacking the entire state! Why can I use words like “attack” and “asshole”? Because there’s no other way to describe a 12.25% tax on food.

Here’s the PDF in text format for you:

There are currently nine initiative petitions and two legislative proposals to place a constitutional amendment before voters in November 2012 that would eliminate personal and corporate incomes taxes and replace them with a greatly expanded sales tax. The proposals have significant costs for the state and its residents, and are fraught with uncertainty.

What Would the Mega Sales Tax Proposal Do?

• Eliminate state personal and corporate income taxes;

• Eliminate earnings taxes in St. Louis and Kansas City (even if the cities vote to continue the tax in April); [and we did!]

• Eliminate current dedicated state sales taxes that fund conservation and other services;

• Eliminate current state sales tax exemptions, including the exemption for food;

• Eliminate all tax credits except the Senior Circuit Breaker Tax Credit*; and

• Replace the current sales taxes with a higher sales tax on purchased goods AND almost all services.

The mega tax shifts from the diversified revenue structure that currently funds the state services that benefit Missouri’s local communities and economy to one that relies entirely on the consumption of individuals.

The Proposal Taxes Essential, Basic Products and Services

This is not the current sales tax, but a greatly expanded sales tax that would apply to nearly every product and service that Missourians need – including basic necessities and services required by working families. It is unlike anything ever seen before in any state.

• Basic necessities currently exempt from sales tax, like food, prescription medication, rent, and child care would be taxed.

• SJR 1 & HJR 8 tax health-related services including family counseling, mental health treatment, copayments for doctors’ office visits, and even nursing home care.

• Nearly every service industry becomes taxable. Transportation, realtor services, legal and financial services and even funeral services would be subject to the tax.

These Essential Products and Services Would Be Taxed at a Much Higher Rate

Estimates of the tax rate needed to pay for the cost of the proposal range from 10 to 15 percent, depending on which version of the proposal is evaluated. Jim Moody, former budget director under Governor Ashcroft, recently reported that the initiative petitions would require a rate of 15 percent (12.25 percent state rate plus an additional average local tax rate of 2.75 percent). Every time an exemption is added, the rate would need to be adjusted even higher.

The Vast Majority of Missourians Will Pay More in Taxes under the Proposal

A 2010 analysis by the Missouri Budget Project and Institute on Taxation & Economic Policy found that even with a prebate to every household, 95 percent of Missourians actually pay considerably more tax under this plan than they currently do.

The Mega Sales Tax Proposals are Constitutional Amendments

By locking in the policy as a constitutional amendment, any future changes would be extremely difficult and would require another vote of the people.

The Mega Sales Tax Will Likely Have a Negative Impact on Missouri’s Economy

Seventy percent of Missourians live near the borders of other states. The state’s 12.25 percent mega sales tax will likely provide an incentive for them to shop for goods and services in other states.

The Mega Sales Tax Creates Potential Financial Insecurities

• It is not clear who may get a prebate (a payment made to taxpayers to offset the cost of higher sales taxes), how the prebate would be funded, and how to assure that it holds its value over time without decreasing state revenue.

• Legislators will be pressed to exempt additional products/services from the mega sales tax, which means the rate will have to be higher than the estimated 15 percent (12.25 percent state, 2.75 percent local).

• The tax rates called for in the proposals are insufficient to replace current revenue. If the tax rate is capped at 7 percent (as called for in the petitions), instead of the 12.25 percent needed to replace revenue, the Missouri Budget Project roughly estimates the state will have a general revenue shortfall of more than $3 billion. (Missouri’s general fund budget is currently $7.9 billion.) This shortfall would have tremendous negative impact on education, health care, transportation, services for seniors, and the infrastructure that makes Missouri a desirable place to live and work.

• There will be considerable administrative cost to administer the prebates, particularly if monthly checks are sent to taxpayers to offset the cost of the mega sales tax.

• By taxing new goods, but not used goods, there is a potential disincentive to purchase things like newcars and houses. This could have a dramatic negative effect on manufacturing and building industries.

For more information, contact the Missouri Budget Project.

www.mobudget.org

*The senior citizen circuit breaker is a property tax credit for seniors, disabled veterans, those who are 100% disabled, and certain widow(er)s.

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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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I admit, I used to be a language snob. But then I read an argument similar to the one below, so I started paying attention to various situations in which less-than-perfect language was used, and people’s reactions. After a few months, I came to the conclusion that a lot of the time the language discrepancy is pointed out for the express purpose of “putting someone in hir place”. In other words, we all are rather prone to using “proper English” as a tool of the kyriarchy.

I’ve been trying to stop doing this. I ask myself “can I understand the speaker’s intent? is this for an academic or journalistic publication?” If the answers are yes and no (respectively), then I need to drop it, as it’s none of my goddamn business regulating another person’s tongue usage.

(Besides being racist, this can also be classist and ableist, as not everyone can afford a “proper” education and not everyone’s brains can process English the same way.)

stfuracists:

This anonymous submission gives me an opportunity to go off about language.

Look, there is no “right” way. There are certainly more formal ways of speaking than others, and there are situations where slang or regional dialects may be less than helpful.

But sometimes, in some places, some people pronounce a-s-k as “ax,” or e-s-p-e-c-i-a-l-l-y as “expecially.” So what? Like I said, sometimes, in some places, some people. There are many different ways of talking, different choices we can make with our words. You may say, “Don’t play me like that,” and I may say, “Why you carrying me like that?” And we both mean, “Why are you trying to deceive me?” or “Why are you trying to do wrong by me?” You say soda, I say pop. IT’S PERFECTLY FINE. It’s a-ok. It’s all good.

Even if we don’t always make the same word choices as another person, we usually know what the other person means, so don’t be a jerk about it. Whether it’s all the different ways within the United States, or all the different ways around the world, the important thing is to keep trying to communicate, not nitpicking those attempts.

And, yes, there is a history of a “black” way of speaking, though it certainly does not apply to all black people, nor do all black people talk differently from white people, nor do all black people who do talk different from some white people talk in the same way, nor do all white people talk the same way, nor is there a “white” way of speaking, nor should “the right way” (i.e. the formal use of English) be considered the “white” way (if you don’t believe me, get a white person from Boston, a white person from Alabama, and a white person from Minnesota in the same room, and try to tell me they all talk the same). That history, that dialect, and those different language choices in what we may consider “black” culture are neither superior nor inferior to other ways of speaking.

A black person in a big city with what has been called a “black” dialect is not “ghetto.” A white person in a rural town with what has been called a “Southern” accent is not a “hick.” A Latino or Latino for whom English is a second language, who still may have a pronounced accent originating from another country, doesn’t “need to learn to speak American.” An Asian-Pacific American in the same situation isn’t a “fob.”

STFU Racists! I hate your racist epithets and pejorative language!

But… I don’t hate on anyone’s dialect, accent, or lingua franca. So STFU, language snobs.

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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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4
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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9
Jun 15

Food Stamps For Fast Food

Yum! says the elderly, disabled, and homeless should be able to use food stamps to buy hot meals, especially those unable to cook

It’s true that not everyone has the ability to cook food. But the answer is not pushing restaurant food. The answer is providing access to cooking equipment.

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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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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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