The Four Unicorns of the Gaypocalypse
A personal blog. Sometimes I make GIFs.
If white radicals are serious about revolution, they are going to have to discard a lot of bullshit ideology created by and for educated white middle-class males. A good example of what has to go is the popular theory of consumerism.
….
First of all, there is nothing inherently wrong with consumption. Shopping and consuming are enjoyable human activities and the marketplace has been a center of social life for thousands of years.
The locus of the oppression resides in the production function: people have no control over which commodities are produced (or services performed), in what amounts, under what conditions, or how these commodities are distributed. Corporations make these decisions and base them solely on profit potential.
As it is, the profusion of commodities is a genuine and powerful compensation for oppression. It is a bribe, but like all bribes it offers concrete benefits—in the average American’s case, a degree of physical comfort unparalleled in history. Under present conditions, people are preoccupied with consumer goods not because they are brainwashed but because buying is the one pleasurable activity not only permitted but actively encouraged by our rulers. The pleasure of eating an ice cream cone may be minor compared to the pleasure of meaningful, autonomous work, but the former is easily available and the latter is not.
”Ellen Willis - Women and the Myth of Consumerism, 1969 (via zhinxy)
THIS WAS WRITTEN IN 1969 BUT WHITE ANARCHISTS EVERYWHERE HAVE MISSED IT.
(via everythingbutharleyquinn)
The answer is NO.
The “fact” that junk food is cheaper than real food has become a reflexive part of how we explain why so many Americans are overweight, particularly those with lower incomes. I frequently read confident statements like, “when a bag of chips is cheaper than a head of broccoli …” or “it’s more affordable to feed a family of four at McDonald’s than to cook a healthy meal for them at home.”
(via sunfoundation)
this bullshit fills me with a very specific kind of rage. so, TIME TO DEBUNK!
- that meal from mcdonalds takes virtually no time to acquire AND is available almost anywhere.
- the second meal? that “salad” is lettuce … with nothing else, not even dressing unless its just olive oil or some milk i guess? gross.
- also thats the price of each serving, not an entire loaf of bread, a bottle of olive oil, etc. that stuff adds up which means you have to have a lot of money at one time to buy it all.
- that meal probably took an hour and a half to make, which is a long fucking time when you work multiple jobs or are caring for a lot of people or dont have help! seriously, if you are a single parent of three who works, is spending an hour and a half every night preparing a meal a likely option?
- same with beans and rice! also, you know whats a fucking bummer? eating beans and rice every night because you are poor. ask any person who has done it and they will tell you (you can start with me).
- there is a “nutrition” argument here that lacks a follow up: poor people are more likely to be doing physical labor and need more than 571 calories per meal.
- you know who is less likely to know how to bake or prepare a chicken? people without access to the internet, or libraries, or who werent taught how to by their parents because their parents worked all the time. access to healthy foods is a classist issue and classism is cyclical, you fucking morons.
- seriously, these sorts of infographics make me want to fucking flip tables. do you know why people don’t eat more fresh fruits and vegetables? because fresh fruits and vegetables are expensive, because they take a long time to prepare, because they dont live near a grocery store that has a decent produce section, because they dont have reliable transportation to get groceries to and from the grocery store, because they dont have the energy to plan all of the shit that is involved in making healthy, intentional, filling, balanced meals. basically: poor people get fucked, and then we get BLAMED for being lazy.
- eating “healthy”, aka access to fresh fruits and vegetables, is a privilege, first, foremost, always. so fuck you new york times and your ignorant goddamn infographic.
- there are SYSTEMATIC REASONS that we do not have equal access to fresh fruits and vegetables. they are very REAL problems. besides, you know, systematic poverty in america, the total mis-distribution of farm subsidies is a perfect place to start. read about that, then either get bent or start working on the actual problem.
YES YES YES YES YES
I am so fucking tired of seeing these misleading as fuck infographics about how “healthy eating is cheap!” No. No it is fucking not.
AND where the FUCK are you getting your food that salt and pepper are 5 cents?!??! or bacon for $1.85? or a CUP of oil for 55 cents? FOUR pieces of bread for 75 cents? 3 cups for rice for 50 cents?
this stuff just doesn’t make sense, is extremely shaming, and is extremely misleading.
Yep! Im a vegetarian, but I’m hungry all the damn time because of food prices.
COMMENTARY. Also, maybe wealthy people spend $7 per person when they go to McDonald’s, but I’m pretty sure if you’re poor you’re probably ordering off the dollar menu.
Seriously, fellow well-off white people, just THINK about what it might be like to be someone else for five minutes, it is not THAT hard.
what’s wrong with teach for america?I. [verb] for [state], where “state” = poor people of color who cannot speak for themselves
II. TFA teachers (“teachers”) are 65% white, which is actually lower than the national average. That seems super liberal and shit until you account for the fact that students taught by TFA recruits are overwhelmingly nonwhite. This statistic, however, is not listed on their “diversity page.”
III. Racism, mostly. Racism, colonialism, classism.
IV. How many TFA applicants have you met who said they wanted something that’ll look good on their resume for law school? ‘Cause I’ve met a lot.
V. They were all white.
VI. Like, look at all of these white people teaching kids in Detroit. Don’t even get me started on the colonization of DPS over the past thirty years.
VII. Gateway to J.P. Morgan. Really.
VIII. Scab labor for our communities—in 2011, when the Kansas City program was founded, 87 local teachers were fired and 150 TFA recruits replaced them. The school didn’t have to pay them.
IX. Really, though, this is pretty straightforward:
a. entice white college graduates with Ivy Law prospects (literally). Pay them less than you can legally pay a person with a teaching certificate or a member of an educators’ union. Fire community members in the poorest, most racially segregated schools in the country. Send white University of Michigan Grads to teach said poor kids of color about Achievement. They will leave after two years.
b) entice non-white or poor college graduates with promises of Not Being Destroyed By Debt/Poverty. Repeat.
If you think the primary difference between you and people on welfare is that you are better than them… I don’t want to know you.
