It is funny, I’ve
always been firmly in the I’m not a communist camp while pushing for the
redistribution of wealth. I’ve been stressing out all month and last month.
Things are just crazy and hectic, but on Saturday night I took the afternoon
off from all the stuff I had to do and went to a friend’s holiday party. I hate
these kinds of things. I never know what to do, and there are always people
there I don’t know and don’t know what to say to them. Instead, I stuck near
the people I came with. And at some point my friends were talking about poverty
and work.
Well, when you play
my song. The solution offered had a lot of problems, mostly being rooted in the
assumption that unemployed people could and should work. However, it also
called for the government to supply jobs, which didn’t go over well. In fact my
friend’s husband jokingly called her a socialist. But overall, I don’t
interject too much with friends in settings like this. They aren’t particularly
interested in the numbers or facts about poverty. I did note that most people on
welfare now have barriers to employment, which my friend was like, “we’ll get
them a social worker!” Well, that might help, but that isn’t going to solve the
problem of a sick dependent or an abusive partner. However, when asked what I
was thinking, I said I’m a communist and think we should start by
redistributing wealth, and then see where we are. My friend was essentially advocating
for a program similar to FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps, which had flaws,
but did employ a lot of men through the Great Depression, but on a smaller
scale, specifically, a Baltimore size scale. Of course, we didn’t address the extrapolated
consequences from a program like this, which is essentially round up unemployed
people of color for manual service work that theoretically everyone benefits
from, but most likely will benefit the wealthy. Or we can just do what several
researchers have said, which is just cut a check instead of welfare to work
programs which would save the most money.
The other strange
conversation we found ourselves having was with our hostess’ family, which made
things awkward. My friend brought up Bill Cosby and the Virginia rape scandal/Rolling Stone. Things were fine, and
then someone begins a statement that can’t end well, “I don’t want to blame
anyone, but what do you think a man wants at 10pm?” Pizza? Because that’s
usually what I want at 10pm. See, saying the second part of this statement
nullifies the first. You are putting the responsibility of the rape on the
woman who experienced it because what do you expect. Well, I expect going to
someone’s house at 10pm very little, but definitely I expect not to be drugged
and raped. Just me? My friend did well driving this conversation back to the
non-shamey/balmey side of things. This sort of argument, the women you need to
think that every man you meet is a rapist or you’ll be raped and deserved it,
makes women responsible for the actions of their rapists. Additionally, it means
all women have to treat all men like rapists, when most men aren’t. Start the
woe is me, it isn’t fair women treat me like a rapist swan song from men. Well,
you don’t get to have it both ways, either rapists are responsible for their
actions, the end or women are and we have to treat everyone like a rapist. I
did get in one comment that you should always be able to withdraw consent, so
even if you knew what he wanted at that hour, around the time he slipped something
in your drink you lost your ability to withdraw consent. There was also a sub-discussion
on who gets believed and who doesn’t, which was particularly troubling. It was
very reminiscent of some women can’t be raped because she is unlikeable/her
body is property of the public because she is famous/etc. It was awful.
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