seperis: (Default)
seperis ([personal profile] seperis) wrote2012-01-11 08:08 pm
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yeah, no, and fuck you

Really.

On behalf of those of us who were and are single women on welfare with children in the South and at some point in our lives lived in a--I need to check the wording--"rural south USA in a welfare slum trailer"--and who do not think our population should be fodder for your smug little war on the word shack:

Fuck. You.

Are you fucking serious?

Are you comparing lower income women's lives--and since you used the word 'welfare', we all know you're talking about women, who make up the majority of welfare clients; women, whose choices and lives are limited by poverty and the difficulties raising children alone, without spousal support; poor urban women, a population that is statistically more likely to be battered by their male partner--to a fucking challenge using the word shack?

I suppose [personal profile] indywind felt it was 'problematic' to use the term 'trailer trash'; should I be grateful? Thank you. Your buddies in that thread who were so excited to read it--and that super clever "Now them's fightin' words!!!" jab--also have my abject gratitude that parts of my life--and my family, friends, and clients from when I was a caseworker who decided benefits for those renters of "rural south USA in a welfare slum trailer"--are being held up in humourous example of how southern poverty is totally like using the word shack. I feel as if social justice is on my side.

So, my night is shit. How's everyone else doing?
scrollgirl: canadian dreamsheep (misc dreamwidth)

[personal profile] scrollgirl 2012-01-12 03:45 am (UTC)(link)
No, you're right, that comment just piled on more and more offensiveness--especially because it was a targeted comment. (The fic challenge isn't actually *about* First Nations poverty.) And there's no real point in trying to compare poverty in the south to First Nations poverty and the racism and stereotyping they face. I mean, in a way I was making a comparison? I didn't want to have it lost in the confusion that this *is* how the First Nations are treated. And that what "welfare queen" means to an American might be different from what it means to a Canadian. But neither do I want to make it a competition of who has it the worse off.

But I'm going to stop talking now, especially since I'm not First Nations myself, so I don't know what it's like to live that experience and I'm definitely talking out my depth now.