Thursday, November 4, 2010

A Word on Categorization, Universalizing and Labeling

I’ve been told a time or two that I don’t play well with others. I don’t quite see it that way. I just simply have a low tolerance for generalizations, ignorance and elitism. I don’t think I’ll ever understand the need for some to state opinion and personal preference as fact; to stereotype and give tropes power by holding them over the heads of individuals just because they’ve been labeled statistics.

It makes me sad really, to be subjected to the hateful ideologies of others. So then I get too emotionally invested in the topic of discussion, throwing out my counterarguments, only to be met with 10 more motherfuckers backing the one. It’s exhausting.

The latest babbling bus load of bullshit is about welfare recipients and what they should and should not be able to buy with their benefits. More policing of the poor on the grounds that if you are poor, then you should ONLY be spending your government issued dollars on shelter, and since said government issued dollars are not even enough for shelter, then you shouldn’t be spending them elsewhere anyway. In other words, if you are on welfare, you do not have the right to spend your benefits on the same kinds of shit that folks who aren’t sucking society dry spend their hard earned cash on. Yeah, a BABBLING BUS LOAD OF BULLSHIT! Of course it isn't really the article itself that has my ass on fire, but reactions to it by a few Facebookers. I cannot tell you how tired I am of reading and hearing people unleash about tax payers and tax dollars. Why is it so hard to view the tax dollars that the welfare recipient spends as the tax dollars that s/he has already paid into the system? Why is the welfare recipient still being viewed as the scum of the earth, the one who is too lazy to work, and every other negative attribute imaginable?

I recently encountered a student-parent who is worrying herself to death about how she will combine a part time job with being a full time student and mother, because being viewed in the negative light of the welfare queen is so much worse to her than trading in time with her son for time spent in a position that wont even supplement her household’s income, which was cut in half by the recession. She has paid her hard earned money into a system that she is now afraid to utilize, and for what? Because people who are working from what they’ve heard, and a few things they’ve read, hold ill feelings toward people who are trying to survive in this fucked up society, and in addition to surviving, add a little normalcy into their everyday by stimulating the economy? Yeah, a BUS LOAD OF BULLSHIT!

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