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 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?

Comments

[minim_calibre]

I would cheerfully describe the house my Granny lived in before she went into the nursing home as a shack.

An actual, factual Canadian shack. In which I am sure people had sex, though perhaps not my Granny (and if she did, I don't want to know about it).

On the other side of the family, my cousin Dale's place, well, it's more of a singlewide. Or maybe a doublewide. I'm not actually sure, as I've never physically seen it, and her FB descriptions (usually when she has an electrical fire, or has to escape a forest fire) aren't what one would call vivid. But it is a shack in spirit.

And you know, I get being pissed about the American Elephant. More, perhaps, than many people with Canadian citizenship, because I live in the states and it chafes me daily. But holy SHITBALLS, that's not the way to respond to it.

[minim_calibre]

And when I say shack, I mean, I have been in the building recently, and if the village had codes or inspections, it would be condemned in a heartbeat. It's an old, falling-apart building in a defunct mining town, currently lacking in electricity and many interior walls.

And it's a fairly typical example of the village where my mother grew up.

I found the whole framing of the argument smacked of classist bullshit, failing to articulate things in ways that made me sympathetic to the arguer. Perhaps it was the mention of the OP's cabin that caused my heels to dig in and make me want to write everything in a Canadian shack.

Christ knows, I know my way around them.

The Katrina thing... I think my head exploded.