saying “you are a burden on society” is just such a weird framing of priorities
It’s like saying “wow, think how much better gas mileage your car would get if you weren’t sitting in it” or “think how dry that umbrella would be if you weren’t holding it in between you and the rainstorm”.
the things we create? they’re for us. they are meant to carry us. they are meant to protect us. we are meant to hold them up to keep us dry.
why do we even have a society if not to take care of each other?
The “friend zone” and unrequited love are not the same thing. Unrequited love is, “I love you, you don’t love me in that same way, I am sad about that.” The “friend zone” is, “I love you, you don’t love me in that same way, you have therefore wronged me.”
Unrequited love is, “My unilateral crush is my problem.” The “friend zone” is, “My unilateral crush is your problem.”
the fact that community colleges are seen as less valid and for “stupid” people is a result of classism and in this essay I will-
ppl in the tags saying that it’s “genuinely a lesser tier of education because people go there for trades and nursing and thats about it” are just proving that its classism. bc a) no thats absolutely not correct. a good chunk of people that go to community colleges do so to knock out their gen eds at a lower price than they’d be if they went to a four year, then transfer to a four year. and more importantly b) trade professions are not lesser than other professions that take higher degrees. people who go into things that take associates degrees are not “stupid”.
if you think ppl who are too poor to attend a four year university for all four years, or that ppl who are too poor to/don’t want to get their bachelor’s/master’s/doctorate are “stupid” then i have news for you:
thats classism, babe
My parents were both college professors, and they’ve said precisely this for years.
Here’s a thought, maybe people’s growing irreverence for 9/11 is because it was a long time ago and younger generations weren’t as affected by it, or maybe they are so sick of the way it has been basically commercialised by politicians and used as a device to justify incalculable pain and they are tired of it being cynically trotted out every year and told to never forget while every year they are also told to all but ignore mass shootings and US humanitarian crimes.
And like, I dunno, maybe it isn’t about disrespecting those who died but refusing, for any number of reasons, to be a part of the governmental hallmark industry that has built up around it.
I take students to see the 9/11 memorial all the time. More and more of the students I get were either so young or not even born yet.
And every time, I ask them, what do you think? What are you feeling? And many of them are hesitant to respond so I’ll prompt, “Was it sad? Was it boring?” And as soon as they know I’m not gonna judge them for it, 100% of the time, they respond, “I feel bad that I don’t feel as moved by it as you. You cried when you told us about it and I get that it was such a horrible day and so many people died, but I can’t really think of what life was like before or just after that time.”
That really struck me the first time I heard it because these kids really don’t remember a time when things were so carefree and relatively quiet. Little to no security screenings. Almost zero school shootings. Kids stayed outside by themselves until the street lamps came on.
Because they grew up in a post-9/11 society, all they’ve ever known is mass violence and distrust of everything. Kids expect a plane to crash into a building, a truck bomb to go off at a big event, a student shooting up a school. And they’ve just got to deal with it and keep moving on or they won’t survive.
I honestly think that we would eliminate one of the major causes of ableism if we stopped basing people’s worth off how much revenue they generate.
This measure is worthless. Actually, it is worth less than nothing.
I used to be a programmer for a spammer. Being rather young, naive, and also desperate for some kind of income, I had no idea what “lead generation” meant and had no idea that the fact that they didn’t talk about how their nebulous product actually helped anyone was a huge red flag. I took the job, slowly learned the codebase, and it took me months to figure out what kind of practices this place actually employed.
I was asked to put in obnoxious popups, but hide the popups for traffic coming in from Google so that Google wouldn’t cut off their sponsored traffic because the site violated their standards, a few months into my time there. That was when I began to realize the kind of place I was working at. Then I was asked to create a throwaway email account to test something, and I found out what actually happened to the poor people who put their information in for Free Insurance Quotes. They were inundated with spam. I found out the company had no site of its own, just hundreds of these “Free Insurance Quotes” sites all with slightly different stock photos and slightly different forms and a “complaints” page that was very hard to find with an email that was never checked.
I was a Hardworking Taxpaying American when I worked at that job. I was, according to this capitalist logic, contributing to society and of much more value than a disabled person who supposedly is a leech on society.
I was making the world worse by working at that job. I would have been making the world better if I did absolutely nothing but stare at the wall all day rather than work that job.
Many jobs are like this. Anyone who works at an oil company is making the world worse. Anyone who works at a tobacco company is making the world worse. People in various abusive therapy industries are making the world worse. I’m sure you can name plenty of other jobs in this category. The world would be better if those jobs did not exist.
Now, I am disabled. I am chronically ill, and I cannot even work a sedentary job because having to sit up for eight hours at a time would make me have to lie in bed for days.
I am making the world much better now by replacing the invasive grasses on my front lawn with strawberries that attract native bees, by sealing my house to increase its energy efficiency, by taking care of a flock of chickens and doing my best to ensure that they have a good happy life, by replenishing the soil in the yard with compost and chicken manure, than I was at that job. And I don’t do very much – I can’t.
Equating the arbitrary numbers one accumulates for oneself to one’s actual value or contribution is a dangerous lie, and it is poisoning the planet.
This is so incredibly important. Thank you for this.
This shit used to hurt me so much. Now when I go shopping I don’t even touch shit unless I know I want it lol cus I know that pain
i’m that person you see folding something and putting it back after i’ve looked at it lol
^^^ And if I can’t fold it back perfectly they’re gonna at least see that I tried.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
All.of.this
Worked in retail almost half a decade, and let me tell y’all this is daily, not just Black Friday or summer sales.
I’ve had people look me straight in the eyes while they knock over a perfectly folded stack of shirts off a table so they could put down their Starbucks cup. People leave food, drinks, diapers, used pads and bandages, even one time an actual syringe on tables.
I’ve had people destroy entire displays and complain about how dirty and “why don’t employees respect their own store” while I was directly next to them frantically trying to fix what they, themselves, just messed up.
This shit is so ingrained in me now that I fixed displays while on vacation in Disney World for a full half hour.
And before anyone says anything, no, actually picking up after grown adults that should know better, it actually isn’t my job to clean up after you all day. We have customer service, check for product, work the registers, keep the bathrooms clean, deal with angry customers, try to prevent shop lifting, and keep the store running. Recovery (fixing displays) is supposed to be low on our list because people aren’t supposed to be selfish shitheads. If you wouldn’t destroy your friend’s house, don’t destroy retail shops.
I’ve literally had people ask me if I work at several stores before because I’m cleaning up after myself??? like they are asking me for help and I’m like “idk I don’t work here” then they are like “then why are you cleaning?”
It’s,,, basic manners,,, to clean after yourself,,, what is wrong with people,,,
And please, for god’s sake watch your kids. I’ve seen a kindergartener perusing an illustrated Kama Sutra while mom shopped for alphabet workbooks two aisles over. I’ve seen a boy go down the meat case in a grocery store, jamming his fingers through the plastic film on trays of raw steaks, pork chops, chicken breasts, and fish, no parent in sight. I was in the clothing store (though thankfully on the other side) where a running kid tripped and fell face first into a peg display. And I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen kids stand up in the grocery cart seat and then fall over the handle.
It’s so significant too that this narrative was collected by Zora Neale Hurston, one of the greatest authors and anthropologists of her time. She was shunned by the “gatekeepers” of both of these professions, largely because of her Blackness, her womanhood, and her uncompromising commitment to honoring and showcasing both in her works. She died penniless and alone in a state-run institution in 1960. All of her works had gone out of publication by then. It took more than a decade before she was rediscovered. A young author by the name of Alice Walker had come across her work and was deeply inspired by it. “In 1973, after an exhaustive search, Walker came across Hurston’s unmarked grave in Ft. Pierce, Fla. She purchased a headstone for Hurston’s tomb and had it inscribed “A Genius of the South.“”
It is through Zora Neale Hurston’s pioneering sacrifice, and the acceptance of that inheritance by Alice Walker that we have found this missing piece of our history. Without the courageous and unfailing work of Black women, we wouldn’t have Cudjo Lewis’s story. We are slowly regaining a narrative that’s been hidden from us, one that continues to be lied about. Trust Black women to lead the way.
wupacing 