We almost impeached a president for cheating on his fucking wife but we can’t even impeach Trump for putting children in fucking cages
Y’all are fucking annoying
It’s worse than that. We didn’t almost impeach Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton was impeached–the senate just ruled to keep him in office.
And what we impeached him for was perjury and obstruction of justice.
Aka lying and getting in the way of official investigations.
You know. The things Trump has been doing since day one. On live TV and twitter. Where we have fucking proof of it.
Yet here we are. And there he fucking still is.
This is why we have to vote this November, guys. We have got to take back congress. Trump will almost certainly be impeached if we can get enough seats back.
Please please, I beg of you. Even if you don’t love your democratic candidates this November; even if they’ve done ‘problematic’ things in the past–please vote. The people who sat it out in 2016 because they didn’t love Hillary, or were bitter about Bernie, or fucking voted third party–they are the ones who carry the weight of this administration. The republicans went in undivided. The democrats went in split. And now children are being torn from their families, legal citizens are being deported, and we have fucking Nazis on the rise again.
I get that you want your politician’s views to align perfectly with yours. I do. But sometimes in politics you have to chose the lesser of two evils. We didn’t do that in 2016.
I beg of you. Do it this year.
You may not be able to find a progressive candidate whose ideas precisely align with yours…but I PROMISE you that the fascist racist misogynist white supremacists have candidates whose ideas EXACTLY align with theirs.
Whenever law enforcement’s reach is extended again and someone chimes in with “well just don’t break the law and you’ll be fine!” I’m always like…
…you know the government can just make laws, right? You know that many of history’s worst abuses have been legal, because legal and ethical are not the same thing, right? You realise that governments can and have considered people to be illegal, and if your very existence is considered illegal, what the heck are you supposed to do there, right?
The reason we are pushing back against law enforcement overreach isn’t because we’ve got something to hide, it’s because we don’t live in a magical land where the government and all its agents always act in everyone’s best interests.
Internet, I am a queer researcher of queer health and I have something to say.
A few weeks back, a study went viral about the relationship between marriage equality policy and queer teen suicide rates, and a lot of people reacted thusly: “queer mental health is better when we’re not discriminated against! BREAKING: SKY IS BLUE, WATER IS WET”
This happens a lot. People see research about a thing ~Everyone Already Knows~ and they mock it. Now I want to make two things really clear:
1. Everyone does not already know.
2. This shit can lose these projects their funding.
Did you know that media coverage is a crucial factor in funding allocation? When we submit our application for grant renewal, we have to provide a list of news articles about our research so they can decide whether the public cares enough about us to let us keep doing our work. And most research doesn’t get all that much coverage, so individual reactions can really matter. If the primary reaction to our publications is eyerolling, we legitimately might not be able to continue.
I’ve seen some frustration from people who believe this research funding would be better put to use “actually helping” the affected populations instead of–I don’t know, pinning them under microscopes or whatever it is they think we do. But funding for policy initiatives is driven by research. I know you wish politicians would listen to individual voices telling them where the problems are, but that’s honestly not a smart way to direct limited resources. We need solid evidence. And a lot of the areas that need the most attention aren’t obvious–who knew bisexual people are at a much higher risk for physical and mental health disparities than gay and lesbian people? Who would have guessed that transgender folks are more likely than any other group (including straight people) to be military veterans, but overwhelmingly don’t claim their benefits? I’m sure some people noticed these patterns, but they definitely weren’t common knowledge within the queer communities I’ve grown up around, and those findings are leading to direct action as we speak.
I get that it can be frustrating to feel like your identity is being reduced to facts and figures for the benefit of red tape. But trust me, the researchers aren’t your enemy here. Most of us are queer too. All of us are just as frustrated by this crap as you are. We are doing our best, and I swear to you this work really is making a difference. Please don’t sabotage it.
I’m reblogging this because it only has 9 notes, and it should really, REALLY have a lot more.
Also, given the current US administration’s plan to stop collecting data on LGBTQ identities as part of the census, we are in need of accurate, useful data now more than ever.
Plus the ability to cite peer-reviewed evidence of these sorts of things and quantify the extent of “obvious” effects can be pretty important to researchers who are working in adjacent fields that don’t produce the sorts of headline soundbites that get mocked on social media.
And often headlines and summaries are misleading and reductive- a study about wage gaps across a variety of demographics might get headlined “Women Still Make Less Than Men, New Study Shows” when the bulk of the paper is about the intersection of race and gender identity, and I’ve seen people on Tumblr mocking a study about the flavor compounds in food across the Indian subcontinent, conducted by Indian scientists at an Indian university, as “LOL white people don’t know how to cook.”
And to add to this– it’s also important to be able to point to something and say, no, the problem is not that these people aren’t straight. Being able to point to actual science that says, “no, it’s not us, it’s you and how you treat us”– well, that’s a a good thing.
There are a lot of people out there who genuinely believe that being any
flavour of queer is intrinsically harmful to you. That unhappiness is a
natural result of being gay, that to be trans is to be mentally ill,
that bisexuals are confused and troubled. There are people who believe that you cannot be happy or well if you’re queer, and not all of those people are bad people. Some of them have what they perceive to be your best interests at heart, and they want you to be happy, to be well, to be physically, emotionally and mentally safe. And they still act in a way that causes harm, that damages lives, isolates kids and tells them that pain is what they should expect for being who they are.
It’s important to be able to say, “these policies kill kids”, to say, “no, this wouldn’t have happened anyway”, to say, “yes, it does matter what you do.”
A thought I have had:
A lot of the “IN OTHER NEWS WATER IS WET/etc” comes from that sense of frustration that this is in fact Shit We Know (because it’s our lives) and it is in fact frustrating to have these things treated like a revelation.
It’s useful to turn that frustration around into shapes that are less likely to get research shut down. Like “FUCKING FINALLY SOMEONE DID THE FUCKING RESEARCH”. Or “AT LAST. SOMETHING TO THROW AT THE STRAIGHTS.” or “WE HAVE SCIENCED THE THING NOW WILL YOU BELIEVE US?!”
Know that the researchers are, as OP notes, probably on your side! They have fought to get this stuff in order to have Data to back shit up.
Additionally, everything everyone else has said, and ALSO that even when we study things we’re Pretty Sure Of we more often than not discover that there was at least some aspect that we were wrong about, or had under(or over)estimated, or whatever, or a contributing factor nobody had considered, so it is actually important to Do The Damn Research in order to make sure we can do the BIGGER research.
But if you’re having that sense of ARGH WHY IS THIS EVEN IN QUESTION, like: this is fair! But it’s also pretty crucial to reframe the direction of the argh, to provide impetus for MORE of this kind of evidence-seeking, rather than less.
Another thing! Even if you are LGBTQ+ yourself, there’s tons of things you can learn from these studies. Like, for example, school bullying.
For a paper I was writing, I needed a statistic that basically said “LGBTQ+ teens get discriminated against and makes them mentally ill.” This was something I knew, and my LGBTQ+ friends knew. Obviously, right?
But the study also said the following:
The bullying based on their identity, or repeated discrimination from other children, is a problem that does contribute to the development of depression and anxiety
[Here is the statistical amount of that impact]
And one mitigating factor that can decrease this effect by some ridiculously high number is parental acceptance
Of course, yeah, if you asked an LGBTQ+ person if they would have felt less terrible if their parents were accepting, they would say yes. But the study revealed that, due to the threat of homelessness, as well as acceptance making it easier for students to cope with the stress of school bullying, parental education would have way more impact than school bullying programs. Also, because LGBTQ+ kids face unique challenges of often being forced into independent living, then the LGBTQ+ political movement should be working together with youth activism.
And this is just one example. So it’s important to read these studies if you have access to them, because it’s not just obvious stuff! If you’re open to learning things to spite Straight people, because copying down statistics with proper citations is delightful, you can also better guide your own activism to be more effective.
And I mean. Isn’t the entire field of science basically just “water is wet” anyway? That’s what scientific research is.
“[I]t is actually more expensive to be poor than not poor. If you can’t afford the first month’s rent and security deposit you need in order to rent an apartment, you may get stuck in an overpriced residential motel. If you don’t have a kitchen or even a refrigerator and microwave, you will find yourself falling back on convenience store food, which — in addition to its nutritional deficits — is also alarmingly overpriced. If you need a loan, as most poor people eventually do, you will end up paying an interest rate many times more than what a more affluent borrower would be charged. To be poor — especially with children to support and care for — is a perpetual high-wire act.”
The problem with the idea of 8 hours of work, 8 hours of sleep and 8 hours of recreation as a structure for a day is that it simply can’t work that way. If I’m expected to be at work at 9, then my work day must begin at 7. Allowing myself a rushed experience to wake up and get to work. And I live close to work. So either my recreation or my sleep needs to take a hit, but for some people it could be more. 8 hours a day, 5 days a week as a basis for full time work is honestly unreasonable at that point. Because it isn’t actually 40 hours a week, it’s 50 hours a week lost to a job, of which 10 is unpaid.
some of my coworkers have 2h of transit to get to work, which takes 4-5h off their free time. working full time is a bad idea and shouldve never been a thing
And let’s not forget that maintaining a clean home and providing food for yourself takes over 20 hours a week (appx 20 hours in-house, and varying hours spent running outside errands) if you are completely abled.
I also once saw an article that said that fucking peasants had more vacation time than people today. Considering the barriers to entry to get past the minimum wage trap today, this is the reason why this generation is the most depressed ever.
I’m willing to bet it was this article, which is good, though slightly misleading, as it doesn’t adequately address day shifts and labor demands.
That’s what people will complain about as being misleading when you present it to them. After all, during summer, workers did 16 hour shifts.
Comparing a us worker who works 5 days a week and gets 5 weeks of vacation (the sort of middle class experience we all dream of), there are about 130 “days off” for them.
Assuming a more typical lower class work schedule, with two part time jobs that over lap such that you only have one day a week off, that would be about 52 days off (already less than half, ouch).
For a “medieval” work day, the duration would vary based on sunrise and sunset times, changing annually from 16 hours to 6 and back to 16 each summer.
However, these shifts were broken into regular, long breaks, considered critical for the health and ability of the workers. Generally, there were three meals, two snacks, and a long afternoon nap every work day. Work itself happened for 2-3 hours before the next break. This is a condition that I guarantee you everyone who has ever worked a 12-and-12 wishes were the case today. Or even a 9-5.
Of the calendar year, there were 180 or more holidays scattered, with the largest being the 12 days of Christmas, and whatever that week before Easter is called. There were multiple holidays a month, and every Sunday was always a rest day, no matter what.
In addition, the highly seasonal nature of European living meant you had a lot of down time for long, long periods in winter, even if you kept livestock.
Additionally, the European style of farming, which required fallow fields every few years, created a cultural sense that long rest periods are necessary for the growth of the farmers just as much as for the growth of the farm.
So, basically, although life was worse in almost every way, especially medically and socially, in terms of labor the middle ages have us beat pretty soundly. Even the longest shifts were split into sets of 2-3 hours each, with long breaks between. Half-ish of the year was spent doing no work at all.
You couldn’t pay me enough to go live in that time period, but there are definitely some labor practices we need to bring back into vogue.
What a neat post, I really appreciate the additional information! I had no idea, I just always heard that peasants were treated about as good as slaves so that is pretty surprising. It does make me wonder though, if the majority of the common folk were illiterate, what did they even do during the downtime between the farming seasons?
Music, sex, storytelling, drinking a shitload of crap beer, football/soccer, other sports, gambling, hunting, generally outdoorsy shit, ice skating was pretty common, church, festivals (most of these off-days were holidays after all), fighting, watching other people fight (jousting, boxing, duelling, etc), travel and pilgrimage… there’s a lot of things people do and did that don’t involve reading or industry.
Also, given how extremely physical a lot of the labour was at the time, I imagine there was significantly more sleeping and recuperating from physical strain than you might expect, too, though I can’t say I’ve ever seen any kind of source on that.
You know late stage capitalism has fucked up when ppl are envious of feudalistic labour practices
I keep thinking about an article I read several years ago about how activists got a coal plant shut down when the corporation wanted it to have its license extended for another 20 years. No-one knew who should take credit for the win – the lawyers suing for health reasons, the lawyers suing for worker protections, the activists protesting politicians and corporate offices, the activists who chained themselves to the plant gates, the group who pressured banks to refuse loans for the plant, etc. A while later someone read the company’s annual report and it more or less said they’d cancelled the plant, not because of any single reason, but because all the difficulties across so many aspects of the project made it more trouble than it was worth. They could win on one or two problems, but not a dozen attacks at once, especially when they were all weary from fighting the last battle. I wish I could find the article again, it was much more interesting than I make it sound!
But in the same way that people here keep reminding us all that this is a marathon and not a sprint, I think it’s important to attack Trump and the Republicans on all fronts rather than try to find the one perfect sniper shot to take them down. There should not be a single aspect of their working life where they can escape protests and delays and being overruled by courts and new lawsuits and bad publicity and stupid jokes about them and investigations into their affairs. Washington? Investigators and lawsuits. Home town on recess? Angry locals. Media? Questions about what they knew and when. Internet? Demands for healthcare and video compilations of them saying daft things.
It’s not that one of those tactics is a silver bullet, it’s that this is a war of attrition and every little bit of hassle is worth it. Every individual Republican congressperson should be dreading the sound of a phone or notification because it will be yet another fire they have to put out. They shouldn’t have time to provide assistance to their colleagues or cover for Trump, or time out to refresh and regroup. There are more citizens than there are politicians – tag team until they break ranks.
This Metafilter comment is good and smart and makes me feel better about the work ahead of us.
lol the article frames it as “an opportunity for trouble youth”
It also frames it as job training which implies that a criminal record doesn’t get in the way of becoming a firefighter
california like “is your child unruly? have you thought about throwing them in coal mines? it’s hip! it makes $1.34 an hour!
with this job your child can: die letting other miners know theres no oxygen around.
great job experience!”
i want you all to know this comes directly from budget cuts in firefighter payments at the federal and state levels
california is increasingly relying on prison labor to accomplish necessary things, meaning they have made prison a necessary component of their economic system
which is to say california cannot cut down on its prison population even if they wanted to for prisoners are needed for californias very survival.
theyre ruining peoples lives because it’s cheaper to do that than to pay people what theyre fucking worth.
the original source link isn’t great so here’s some more reliable ones:
I just wish cis feminists would acknowledge more often that there’s really no line you can draw around gender that means “only certain genders will experience these things”
I don’t expect every single analysis to account for every single potential experience, that’s impossible, it’s more like, even trans friendly feminism often looks like “cis women’s experiences with cis men are the default, but trans women are women and trans men are men and nonbinary/genderqueer people exist!” which is like…better, obviously, but….
if you base your ENTIRE gender theory on cis people and then just add a little footnote that goes “ah, also, trans people exist” and call it a day, the theory is not actually going to be very useful for understanding how gender works because, spoiler alert
trans people (including nonbinary and genderqueer people) aren’t a rare and unusual phenomenon that can be easily footnoted as an exception, we’re a PART of the social system you’re trying to understand just like you are, and if you leave us out your understanding is going to be incomplete at best, and actively enforce transantagonism at worse even while you claim it’s trans friendly
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