POC-CREATORS: Other things I'd like to see people who pretend to be poor for a week do.

amydentata:

nudiemuse:

  1. Have a medical issue and no insurance. Nothing life threatening but something that could mean an ER visit. 
  2. Ante up on that, be bleeding, be in major pain, know that you cannot miss work and you cannot afford drugs.
  3. Be prepared not to be treated or given a 1500$ aspirin.
  4. Injure yourself. Hurt you back or neck. Understand that you cannot take time off. You cannot get continual treatment. Deal with it.
  5. Have shady collections agencies calling where you work and your home threatening you when you know you have 20$ in the bank to last you for another week.
  6. Have 20$ and realize as your period starts you have no supplies and only ramen. Also continue to have to work.
  7. Deal with the emotional stress of debt, having to talk about that debt. Deal with the emotional stress of dealing with constant judgement from people who don’t know you. Deal with being talked shitty to if you buy a candy bar with your foodstamps because you just need enough energy to make it to your next meal.
  8. Buy something organic or “fancy” or “healthy” with your foodstamps and listen to what people in your neighborhood say about you.
  9. Deal with extensive awful coverage of people in your situation on the news and in print.
  10. Deal with the feelings of guilt when you cannot provide for yourself or a family. Even small things like a nice pair of tights vs a pair of knee highs from the dollar store.
  11. Go to a job interview in a shabby but clean outfit. Feel people look down their nose at you.
  12. Do your budget and understand that unless you pay a bill late, you will have no cash or money for small items for three weeks.
  13. Go without small items for three weeks.
  14. Etc.

I am so done with people trying to put themselves into the shoes of poor and vulnerable people and only understanding that they are hungry or thankful

Fuck that.

Understand that when one is poor for a long time it goes so much deeper than having a shitty breakfast. It impacts EVERYTHING in your life. And if you do happen to get very depressed, or stressed there’s nothing you can do but keep working or trying to work because you want to survive.

If people want to know about these things so bad, how about shutting the fuck up about poor people and listening to what we have to say.

I hate, HATE bleeding heart tourism. If you need to know so bad ask and listen. You don’t get cookies for coming to the conclusion that the life you already have is nice and that being poor sucks.

Ugh.

Poverty, like any long-term suffering, even causes structural damage to the brain. Children raised into poverty feel this effect very quickly from malnutrition and limited options for activity. Poverty isn’t just a lack of money. It causes real, long-term, physical damage to the body and brain. I have yet to know a person who either lives in poverty now or who was raised in poverty that doesn’t show signs of PTSD.

—-^^ Growing up in poverty I have to agree with that statement.

Think dehumanizing women in the public sphere, portraying them as sex objects and victims of men and simply vessels to be fucked or abused or turned into a great big joke is completely harmless? Tell it to the office worker whose boss referred to her by asking a colleague “if big tits has come in yet”. Tell it to the woman who was asked by her boss in front of 30 colleagues “If I ‘wax my crack’”. Tell it to the girl of 10 who was walking home from school when “two older boys said ‘show us your tits’”. Tell it to the child of 13 who didn’t even understand when two men in a white van asked her if she had “a tight pussy”. Tell it to the woman who reported being groped by strangers “at least once a week and often much more, regardless of what I wear, where I am, how I behave.” Tell it to the woman who declined to talk to a group of men and was pursued down the street by them, shouting “rape!” Tell it to schoolgirl who was “beaten by her boyfriend” and whose “friends asked her if she was going to stay with him until after the prom so she’d have a date”.
Laura Bates, in an article titled The 12 Days of Misogyny, explaining why your hilarious jokes about women actually do matter. (via ceedling)

(Source: theharmattan)

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