Sophianotloren

This guest post is by Eve Rickert, who is co-authoring a new book on polyamory with Franklin Veaux. On the date of this post, they wrappied up a crowdfunding campaign for their forthcoming book by the same name — surpassing their goal of $19,800 to raise a total of $22,757. The extra funding will help support a book tour. Thanks to everyone who contributed!

Eve writes:

I’m writing a book on polyamory called More Than Two. I’m writing it with my sweetie Franklin Veaux, who since the late 1990s has been writing a popular polyamory resource website of the same name.

At the time Franklin started writing his website, couple-centric polyamory was the norm, and primary/secondary hierarchies were more-or-less assumed. His posts such as Secondary’s Bill of Rights were pretty radical at the time they were published. Fortunately, they are less so now.

For the first two decades or so of his romantic life, Franklin himself practiced polyamory in a hierarchical, couple-centric fashion. And I came to polyamory through opening up an eight-year monogamous marriage.

Part of what Franklin and I are trying to do with our book is to reflect the real diversity of structures and approaches that polyamorous people adopt. We’re trying to break free from the couple-centric approach that has long characterized so much of the writing and discourse about polyamory, even on Franklin’s own site. In this process, we’re learning that language can be very slippery. Many common phrases that poly people use — even those who don’t practice hierarchical polyamory — reflect a couple-centric viewpoint. It’s damn hard to root these out.

I’m an editor by profession. Part of my job is to make sure that an author’s true meaning shines through — sometimes in spite of the authors themselves. This includes being alert to sneaky phrases that could imply something other than what I know the author intends. Consequently, I must stay very keenly attuned to all the possible meanings of the language I’m editing.

When I’ve picked up my red pen, so to speak, for the early draft chapters of More Than Two, the book, a few phrases leaped out at me. Now that I noticed them, I’m seeing them everywhere. They’re by no means unique to our writing. These common phrases pop up over and over again on blogs, in articles and on forums. And it’s time for them to go.

Here are five examples of common couple-centric phrases from the polyamory lexicon:

1. “Dating a couple.” This phrase marks the obvious place to start. By pointing it out, I’m also picking on Franklin a little (he knows), since this is the title of a popular page on his website. True, that essay unpacks many of the couple-centric attitudes people in couples can bring to dating — but still he resorts to the phrase in a prominent way.

The phrase “dating a couple” can mean one of two things:

• You are dating both members of an established couple.
• You’re dating someone who is also part of an established couple.

Either way, the phrase “dating a couple” has the weird effect of negating the people within the couple. It turns the couple into a unit, and implies one relationship — when in fact there are three.

Also, isn’t it interesting how the person doing the “dating” of that couple gets to remain an individual, while the people in the couple lose their individuality? In practice, this can be what happens. For instance, people who are coupled up often assume that the people in the established couple must make all decisions jointly — or that someone who dates one of them must date both of them.

Nevertheless, I propose that people DO NOT date couples! People date other people — who may, sometimes, also happen to be part of a couple (or triad, or other established partnership).

2. “Entering a relationship.” This phrase occurs on the same page in Franklin’s website, but it’s incredibly common. Most recently I spotted it in the title of this article: How to Treat a New Person Entering Your Existing Relationship.

Another twist on this phrase is “join a relationship.” Recently (and unexpectedly) I got into a bit of a firestorm on Twitter for uttering what I thought would be the relatively uncontroversial view that you don’t “enter a relationship,” you create one.

Whenever you begin any new relationship, all of your existing relationships will be affected — as will all the existing relationships of your new partner(s). Similarly, you may help create or expand a social unit that you may call a tribe, family, network, polycule, and so on. Any such configuration is a network of relationships — but not a single aggregate relationship, per se. While you may forge new relationships within such a network (as well as affecting other existing relationships) you do not “join” that relationship.

Franklin has pointed out something quite telling: Poly people often will say that a new person is “entering” a couple’s relationship, but almost never that a couple is “entering” the new person’s relationship — even if the new person also has other partners. This choice of words is especially problematic. It implies that the couple’s relationship (the one being entered, of course) is inherently the more significant, or “real,” relationship. Also, the new person can enter or leave — but they do not have the option of forging their own distinct relationship.

3. “All the members of a relationship.” This has also been expressed as “everyone involved in a relationship,” and keeps turning up in our early drafts of chapters and blog posts — as well as in various places online (including on Franklin’s website).

I actually believe — perhaps ironically, given that the title of our book is More than Two — that every relationship contains exactly two people (a dyad, in sociological terms).

For instance: I have relationships with my partners, and they have relationships with each other, and I have relationships of various sorts with my partners’ other partners. All of these dyadic relationships affect each other. But my globe-spanning, 50-person-plus romantic network is not “a relationship” — and neither is the little four-person group comprising me and my three partners.

When you think about this, it should be intuitive. You have relationships with each of your parents (that is, assuming you do) — but you are not “a member” of “their” relationship. Why should it be different with intimate relationships?

Focusing on dyadic relationships actually helps me a lot in navigating tricky poly situations. I think phrasing that refers to relationships as containing more than two people arises from the same place as “entering a relationship” — the presumption that the couple’s relationship is the “real” one (or at least, the more important one), and that other relationships are mere add-ons.

4. “Outside relationships.” The established couple is “inside,” the others are “outside,” get it? Recent I’ve seen this used in LiveScience and, well, all over the place if you participate in any poly discussion groups.

Franklin has done a pretty good takedown of the use of the word “outside” to refer to partners, and what it means: So What Is Couple Privilege, Anyway?. I have heard the phrase “other relationship” used, as well, and it’s slightly better, but not much.

There’s pattern emerging, isn’t there? The couple’s relationship is the “real” relationship. New partners can “join” or “enter” it, thus becoming a “member” of that relationship — or perhaps they will be an “outside” relationship.

And finally…

5. “More than two.” The title of Franklin’s site and our forthcoming book presents some challenges. At first I hadn’t really thought of it as couple-centric. I mean, it just means more than two, right? In monogamy, you’re only supposed to have two people involved with each other romantically; but with polyamory, you get to have more! Sounds simple.

But recently someone mentioned to me that they think More than Two sounds couple centric — and on reflection, I see their point. What might this phrase communicate to people who are new to the idea of poly?

First of all, More than Two might imply that “two” is still the default unit. The simple fact that “two” is a prominent word in the title pushes “two” forward as a concept — perhaps even making “two” appear more concrete than “more.”

Also, this phrasing can conjure the mental image of starting out with two and then adding to that (the “couple+” model of polyamory which borrows much from monogamous culture). Given that couple-centric polyamory is still the default assumption, the risk of such conflation seems especially high.

…Which isn’t to say that we’re ditching that title. Still, this quandary serves as a prime example of how dominant the couple narrative is, even in poly culture. And how — even with the best intentions, and even when working hard to keep our language inclusive — Franklin and I still end up using phrases that assume couplehood as a default unit.

In writing this book, I’ve encountered many more examples of couple-centric language, too many to cover here. I’m not even sure it will be possible to weed them all out.

There are so many different approaches to polyamory, so many structures and configurations, and so many different types of people, that we can’t possibly cover all of them. Nor can we predict where everyone will be coming from or what they’ll want. It’s not realistic to expect that we could. Still, we’re doing our best to maintain our focus on relationships and the people within them, and to make sure our language reflects that intent.

This week the popular Kimchi Cuddles poly webcomic posted a followup cartoon on solo polyamory. (Here’s the first one.)

It’s great that this webcomic is addressing this topic — but this particular cartoon seems to equate having a general sense of autonomy with being solo poly. And that misses the mark.

Why I’m lukewarm on this comic: For many people, being solo poly is about having a paramount commitment to personal autonomy. However, anyone can have a strong commitment to personal autonomy — even people who are involved in deeply life-entangled primary-style (or primary-track) partnerships.

I’ve spoken to many, many people who consider themselves solo poly. It seems like the strongest commonality among them is their relationship preference or status.

That is: most people who consider themselves solo poly don’t currently have (and may not want, or at least are not seeking) a life-entangled primary-style partnership. Solo polyamory appears to be mainly about a particular way to step off the standard social relationship escalator.

This takes into account that many people arrive at being solo poly by choice or by happenstance; it’s not all about a personal commitment to autonomy. In fact, many solo poly people only discover their personal commitment to autonomy well after they end up living solo poly against their wishes (such as after the loss of a treasured primary-style relationship).

Also, many people (poly and otherwise) have partners whom they consider primary, yet they don’t live together (and don’t plan to), or they don’t exhibit other traditional markers of primary relationships — for instance, they may choose to coparent with others, but not with each other.

Conversely, there are plenty of people who are in very strong, life-entangled primary-style relationships — even monogamous couples — who also value their personal autonomy and avoid submerging their individuality into a hydra-headed we-unit. Yes, you CAN be “coupled up” (tripled up, whatever) and still maintain a rather soloish mindset and approach to your relationships. This all exists on a spectrum.

So: It’s great that Kimchi Cuddles is addressing this topic. And generally: Yay autonomy! Still, I hope that there will be further episodes of this webcomic that get more into the logistical implications of being solo poly — situations like dealing with couple privilege, or partners who have escalator-style expectations, or people assuming you’re “just single.”

And, in the big picture, the artist behind this comic is just one person, with their own views. And I’m just one person, with my own views. There are many varying definitions and shades of solo polyamory. I’m not claiming to have the last word. But I do think that portraying solo polyamory as being just about a sense of autonomy is a little like saying someone who likes taking public transit is car-free.

Annie Lowrey’s story on American unemployment is essential, if very depressing, reading:

“I’ve been turned down from McDonald’s because I was told I was too articulate,” she says. “I got denied a job scrubbing toilets because I didn’t speak Spanish and turned away from a laundromat because I was ‘too pretty.’ I’ve also been told point-blank to my face, ‘We don’t hire the unemployed.’ And the two times I got real interest from a prospective employer, the credit check ended it immediately.”

For Ms. Barrington-Ward, joblessness itself has become a trap, an impediment to finding a job. Economists see it the same way, concerned that joblessness lasting more than six months is a major factor preventing people from getting rehired, with potentially grave consequences for tens of millions of Americans.

The long-term jobless, after all, tend to be in poorer health, and to have higher rates of suicide and strained family relations. Even the children of the long-term unemployed see lower earnings down the road.

The consequences are grave for the country, too: lost production, increased social spending, decreased tax revenue and slower growth. Policy makers and academics are now asking whether an improving economy might absorb those workers in time to prevent long-term economic damage.

Plainly, we can all agree that the size of the deficit 30 years from now is the biggest problem facing the country.

Got to give it to Wal-Mart–like the Henry Clay Fricks and J.P. Morgans of old, it lays the system of inequality out for everyone to see:

A Cleveland Wal-Mart store is holding a food drive — for its own employees.

“Please donate food items so associates in need can enjoy Thanksgiving dinner,” reads a sign accompanied by several plastic bins.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer first reported on the food drive, which has sparked outrage in the area.

“That Wal-Mart would have the audacity to ask low-wage workers to donate food to other low-wage workers — to me, it is a moral outrage,” Norma Mills, a customer at the store, told the Plain Dealer.

A company spokesman defended the food drive, telling the Plain Dealer that it is evidence that employees care about each other.

Maybe Wal-Mart is doing more to build worker solidarity with each other than any other institution in America. Because if employees don’t care about each other, they surely know their employer isn’t going go care.

Apparently the paradigm is lacking a certain proactive strategic dynamism:

It is a good story, as well manicured as a college quad during homecoming weekend. But there’s a problem: The man who started this revolution no longer believes the hype.

“I’d aspired to give people a profound education–to teach them something substantial,” Professor Sebastian Thrun tells me when I visit his company, Udacity, in its Mountain View, California, headquarters this past October. “But the data was at odds with this idea.”

As Thrun was being praised by Friedman, and pretty much everyone else, for having attracted a stunning number of students–1.6 million to date–he was obsessing over a data point that was rarely mentioned in the breathless accounts about the power of new forms of free online education: the shockingly low number of students who actually finish the classes, which is fewer than 10%. Not all of those people received a passing grade, either, meaning that for every 100 pupils who enrolled in a free course, something like five actually learned the topic. If this was an education revolution, it was a disturbingly uneven one.

“We were on the front pages of newspapers and magazines, and at the same time, I was realizing, we don’t educate people as others wished, or as I wished. We have a lousy product,” Thrun tells me. “It was a painful moment.” Turns out he doesn’t even like the term MOOC.

I was originally going to photoshop something to do with his sad little self-promotion picture of him wondering to the camera just how to live with himself, but then I realized I couldn’t stand one more second staring at his face and I knew this would piss off the usual suspects, so I decided fuck it! “Happy” Transgender Day of Remembrance everybody!

Matt Walsh, Radio Douchebag’s Self Promotion Blog:
Some people don’t deserve a living wage

Obamacare, Obamacare, Obamacare. Yeah, fuck this noise, let’s take another duck down one of the lesser known tributaries and let the B-sides of the Right’s paid hack brigade have their temporary day in the sun, because, holy fuck am I out of anything to say about fucking Obamacare.

Today’s post is by some wannabe Rush Limbaugh libertarian douchebag with a radio show (and right there I described at least half the right-wing blogosphere), who was helpfully linked to by perennial punching bags, Gay Patriot.

Well, by linked, I mean linked to by a guest post that may or may not be written by Matt Walsh himself, because if we’re not willing to get lost in the really deep thickets then we can shut up and enjoy our Obamacare soup like all the other naughty children.

Shorter (or the last port before Jungle):

• As I stated in the title: Some people deserve to die for want of a living wage. Think that’s harsh? Well, I’ve got my wingnut welfare gig, so fuck ‘em. If they didn’t want to starve to death and die, they wouldn’t have… been alive and not me?

It’s so nice to see low-functioning sociopaths find a community that loves and supports them. Shame that they demand the right to fuck with the lives of everyone else in exchange.

I met someone today who doesn’t deserve a living wage.

You mean you met someone who deserves to die.

Cause see, that’s what living wage means. The minimum amount that someone would need to live and buy the minimum amount of luxuries to avoid going completely fucking bugnuts. In civilized countries, it is the absolute minimum a wage can fall, because anything less would be inhumane and cruel.

I know you fucks are eliminationist authoritarians, but you could at least grow some fucking ovaries about it and own that shit!

I’m often told such people don’t exist, so maybe I hallucinated this encounter.

Well, to be fair, you are a right-wing libertarian. Your grasp on the real world is shaky at best.

From what I could see he wasn’t deserving of a job or a wage. At some point in his life, he might be. Perhaps next week. But today? No.

Ah, I see, what an important point. Some people may not be ready just yet for the strains of modern employment or could be better suited by taking some time to more successfully figure themselves out, treat severe mental illnesses, or just learn the skills necessary to being fully productive in regular employment.

And perhaps instead of having a system where all of us were forced to scramble to stay one step ahead of the catastrophe curve or be rendered starving and homeless, it would be more psychologically healthy to have a robust safety net and opportunities for psychologically “checking out” without it being held against people in future interviews.

Well, Mr. Random Douchebag, I’m genuinely impressed. I wasn’t expecting anyone on the right to propose something so radically transformative instead of acting like a roof and consistent meals were a luxury item being stolen from “deserving people”. Good job on avoiding the easy path and becoming just another sociopathic hack.

In fact, I was arguing about the minimum wage with someone recently. Halfway through the discussion, she forcefully proclaimed that “everyone deserves a living wage.”

I hear this idea quite a bit nowadays. There’s a lot of deserving going on, apparently. Everyone seems to deserve everything. We deserve a job. We deserve affordable housing. We deserve a phone. We deserve cable TV. We deserve internet access. We deserve higher wages. We deserve. We deserve. We deserve.

Or you could go on a giant authoritarian rant against the concept that all people are created equal and are endowed by their creator or lack of creator with certain unalienable rights including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Same diff.

Also… betcha you didn’t know that the right to eat, have a roof over your head, or have a means of accessing the ability to apply for most current-era jobs including entry-level work is the same as the right to watch Fox News and masturbate whenever a video of a bomb dropping is aired.

Cause if he didn’t include that out of place gem, he might actually have to admit that it’s the way those Untouchables think they are entitled to life that really gets his goat.

On a similar note, hey dickwaffles! Don’t want people rambling about how people deserve a job that pays a living wage? Maybe don’t make such things a requirement for surviving our shitty society. Just saying.

It used to be that a man was owed what he had earned.

When exactly was this?

Cause, outside a few small-scale or quickly corrupted instances when the workers were able to seize the means of production, the world has most usually been defined by those who had earned nothing taking that which others had earned and claiming it as their own.

Hell, in the feudal era that libertarians seem most gung-ho about returning us to, the system was pretty much defined by the way that a man’s work only benefited his direct feudal lord and those of his court.

But hey, clearly unlike those you would condemn to death, you must have done something other than achieving the extremely low bar of receiving wingnut welfare and being an ignorant git on the radio in order to “earn” your life.

I’m going to bet on saved a drowning kitten.

Now, he’s owed what he “deserves.” This word, “deserve,” is toxic.

Libertarians, believing basic human rights are a sickening pestilent force since about 1964.

I think we’d all be better people if we never uttered it again in our lives. If I could violently murder a word in the English language, it would be “deserve,” followed by “entitled,” and then, since I’m already on a linguistic killing spree, I’d take out “epic,” “awesomesauce,” and the phrase “just sayin’.”

Internet Tough Guy is evolving! He’s becoming Guy Who Wants to be Mistaken for a Serial Killer!

Hey, insecure douchebags everywhere, let me let you in on a secret. All the posing about how tough and willing to murder at the drop of a hat because you think that will fulfill the precepts of toxic masculinity and give you all the chicks who are clearly not staying away because of your fucked up personality?

No one’s fucking buying it. So just let it go, accept yourself and start being a good man instead of trying to be the best male douchebag at the cock-waving parade.

It’s not deserve’s fault that it’s become such a hideous term in our culture. It should be a fine word. It’s definition is quite manly and respectable:

Or just keep doing the written equivalent of cat-calling out the window of your jacked-up Hummer about how small of a penis you totally don’t have.

That’s good too.

Deserve [dih-zurv]: to merit, to be qualified for, to be worthy of, to have a claim to.

You wouldn’t know from the way it’s used, but “deserve” actually means something very close to “earned.” You deserve something if you are qualified for it, if you are worthy of it, if you have a claim to it.

Well, I can see your confusion. It largely stems from the fact that most people aren’t violent sociopaths and view life as something all people deserve and certainly not something to be revoked for such a fucked-up reason as being born or rendered poor in a capitalist system.

Is everyone qualified for a job? Is everyone worthy of one? Does everyone have a claim to a job? If you have a claim to something, that means you are owed it. So if I’m automatically owed a job, who, precisely, is in my debt? All business owners? So I suppose I can walk into an interview, plop down on the chair, put my feet up on the desk, light a cigar and shout, “I’m here to collect my debt!” Or maybe the universe owes me. The universe owes us all a job, is that it? It used to be: I think therefore I am. Now it’s: I am therefore I’m owed. Is that the way it works?

Yes, clearly with such a gifted mastery of the complexities of language, it makes perfect sense how you have “deserved” your position as a public wordsmith.

I mean, fuck, I get that it’s an attempt to ape the mannerisms of snark in much the way a TV alien might try and ape the mannerisms of humans to comedic effect, but it kinda kills your point when in order to do so you need to pretend you don’t understand how words work.

And hey, let’s take it a step further and note that your chain of “logic” would apply just as much, if not more to your capitalism-fetish approved version. Someone having “earned” the right to a job in this analogy would seem just as silly being viewed as walking into any job on the planet and taking it as per what ze has “earned”.

But hey, don’t worry about it. It’s not like communication is your day… job… oh that is just awkward.

How does the friend I met today fit into the conversation? Let me tell you about this deserving young gentleman.

I was in line for the customer service desk at a particular large retail chain. Two dudes were in front of me, they looked to be about my age. They were wearing t-shirts and jeans, which is standard apparel for this establishment.

Oh noes! How dare they… wear clothes? Um… I’ve got my Hate Boner ready to go, but you kinda need to give me something to work with.

As we all waited our turns, they carried on a conversation that I couldn’t help but hear. Nothing terribly interesting. Evidently they attended a party a few nights ago

THEY HAVE LIVES?!? BURN THEM!

that, they both agreed, was a splendid little shindig (as the kids like to say).

Yes, and then the kids like to hop in the back of their caddy and head on down to the Soda Shop to discuss what they want to do at the next Sock Hop, because apparently I’m Marty McFly and this is the fucking 1950s.

Also, didn’t this fucker say they were about his age?

Finally, it was their turn. The guy on the right spoke for both of them. And when I say “spoke,” I mean “muttered disinterestedly”:

Guy: “Applications?”
Employee: “Sorry?”
Guy: “Ya’ll got applications?”
Employee: “For what?”
Guy: “Ya’ll hirin’?”
Employee: “Oh, you want job applications?”
Guy: “Yeah, ya’ll hirin’?”
Employee: “Well, I don’t know…”
Guy: “Can we just get applications?”
Employee: “Yeah, no, I don’t think we’re hiring.”
Guy: “Oh, sucks, alright.”

And then they both walked away.

AND THEN THEY…

I’m sorry, dude, but you’re just killing the mood for me with this weak ass shit.

Exactly what is it about this story that marks these guys as undeserving parasites that deserve to die?

The fact that they were looking for work in a retail store? Having a Southern drawl?

I mean, I’m sure to you there was some distinguishing figure that makes their inherent unemployability clear as day such as having chewed up bits of human stuck in their teeth or being black, but here in non-crazy world, it just sounds like some guys asking politely about some job applications and having an overworked customer service agent be completely unhelpful and fuck them over, possibly in a manner, if in the likely case that the “obvious” aspect is their black skin, that was discriminatory.

Now, I’m pretty sure this place, like every big chain retailer these days, has their applications online.

Gosh, wouldn’t that have been a fantastic thing for the customer service representative to have noted? What with her being currently employed by the company to dispense just that kind of, well, customer service?

I’m also pretty sure that they, like every big chain retailer, are always hiring. I’m positive they’re hiring in early November, right at the beginning of the Christmas season.

Oh hey, more evidence for my discrimination theory. Thanks, Matt. You’re a trooper.

I’m positive that I could have come up right after them, looked the woman in the eye, spoke clearly and politely and said, “Yes, hello, how are you? My name is Matt Walsh. I’m very interested in any job opportunities that might be available here. Could I possibly speak to a manager if they aren’t busy? If they are, could I fill out an application and leave it here with you, please?”

I guarantee the woman would have either handed me an application, directed me to the website, sent me to a kiosk to fill one out, or even called the manager.

Yeah, because you couldn’t more painfully telegraph “corporate plant” if you tattooed it on your forehead next to the sticky mark from the night before. And she’d be in fear of losing her job if she deviated in any way from pre-approved corporate protocol.

Seriously, Matt, do you even know any humans?

I guarantee that, magically, they would have gone from “not hiring” to “hiring” in the span of 90 seconds. Do you know why?

Because you’re white?

Because I’d present the image of someone who is worthy of a job.

So white, then?

The guys before me presented the image of people who aren’t worthy of mopping the bathroom floors.

By not bleaching their skin before inquiring about positions apparently.

The guys before me put precisely 0.0 percent effort into their “job hunt.” And this is an extremely common problem. Ask anyone who works at a customer service desk, or any manager at an establishment that commonly attracts job searchers in my age demographic or younger. When I worked as a shift manager at a pizza place eight years ago, I once had a dude walk in with his SHIRT OFF and slung over his shoulder. He came up to the counter and said, “what’s up? I need a job.”

I said, “I’m sure you do. Goodbye.”

Um… these are bottom-of-the-barrel retail. They pay shit-ass minimum wage, terrible hours that can be cut at an instant or given overnight thus eliminating any means of reliably planning any other work to supplement an income or any form of life. They often have abusive management, corporate protocols more designed to prevent workers having enough of a will to unionize rather than serve the consumer, and are in general just soul-crushing to suffer through.

Any person who is a survivor of retail, especially during the holiday season, tends to carry a life-long scar and massive triggers around the following things: pop music, anything to do with malls, or the concept of smiling.

They are, by every possible meaning of the word, entry-level positions. The sort of thing intended to be where one learns the basic survival mechanisms of our capitalistic system, such as not stabbing your boss and instead surreptitiously slipping rat poison into their morning coffee.

And in a system like ours, where employment is a requirement for survival, it shouldn’t have some giant barrier for entry beyond “hey, did you show up and are you not so high that you can’t manage to remain standing? Great.”

And indeed, that’s sort of one of the big problems with our current Permanent Depression Economy. There are so many people competing for so few jobs and needing so many of them just to have a roof and food (I’m at around 5 and I’ve got a negative bank account and a week full of rice and soy sauce meals to show for it) that companies can pretty much demand whatever insane level of qualifications they want.

Requiring 10 years experience in the industry for entry level positions? Demanding more skill sets than were seen in people called “geniuses” a scant 50 years ago for a position paying just under living wage? Making it nearly impossible for anyone to land even a fucking retail position if they aren’t absolutely guaranteed to be soulless lifers?

Why not? I mean, the market demands what it will, right?

But see, here’s what all the Captialism fetishists forget.

Yeah, it might currently be great for all those companies that the combination of economic despair and a complete lack of safety net gives them their choice of the desperate masses. But it also means that those who get pulled under or left on the sidelines or passed over by possibly discriminatory reasons have no means of sustaining themselves legally.

And when the poor and those just entering the job market have no legal means of advancing themselves or survival, then it opens up the whole suite of illegal options, including violent revolution.

But hey, don’t worry about it. You, unlike those dirty masses, clawing at your door, have earned the right to live and as soon as you explain that to them, they’ll kindly leave you alone.

Everyone deserves a living wage? That’s a nice thought, but I prefer to walk around in the real world with my eyes open. It’s safer this way.

Oh what a Freudian slip!

Yes, indeed, “it’s safer”. That would be real source of why so many who will never ever see the spoils enjoyed by those rich sons of leisure will gladly die to defend them.

The fear of being smacked down as a non-conforming member of this great species of ours. Of being maltreated like those who are visibly “different” or of dying in the street for wanting to be “deserving” of life in the eyes of society.

The Stockholm Syndrome that leads people to follow religions that shackle them and tell them that their bodies and free thoughts are poison. That leads people to resist even peaceful means of fixing just a fraction of the multitude of ways that our system is broken. That causes so many to flinch and punch down in the hopes that doing so will raise them temporarily into the role of “deserving of life” and spared the punishment given to the rest. That leads people to delude that those on the top wouldn’t be happy to reduce the number of “deserving” until only they themselves remained.

And the thing about that is… it doesn’t actually make you safer. This system doesn’t care if you read Das Kapital every night or you frig yourself off with the edge of Ayn Rand books.

Because that’s how conformity and authoritarianism works. And the sooner people realize that, the sooner we can actually make all our lives better.

And it allows me to see that a certain portion of the population can’t even be bothered to speak in full sentences when searching for employment opportunities.

Um, everything but the first sentence of your example were full sentences. But hey, it’s not like mastery of English is a supposed qualification for your considerably overpaid job or anything.

But hey, it wouldn’t be a libertarian rant if it wasn’t the desperate attempt of a white man who knows he is grossly underqualified for the paycheck he receives rationalizing why he deserves it over far more qualified non-white-cis-hetero-males.

There are a lot of unemployed people in this country.

Yeah, there are.

More, one might say, than there are available jobs to accommodate them.

Which, one might further note, just may necessitate some form of genuine living wage welfare to ensure that those who are designated the losers in capitalism’s great tea-bagging can still survive with food and a roof over their heads.

But hey, I guess if you just rationalize that all the unemployed are some unemployable human wreckage who deserve death because they aren’t polite white enough, then it can make it possible to pretend that nothing needs to change.

Many are hardworking, ambitious, competent people who have fallen on tough times. I feel for them.

But sadly, you need to die in order to get rid of that fucker and his unpardonable sin of asking politely for an application in front of Matt Walsh in a manner that didn’t let him relieve his desperate hard-on for watching poor people beg like dogs for the right to work a shitty job. I mean, seriously, he got himself all riled up and there wasn’t even a desperate plea or nothing!

I take solace in the knowledge that these folks will get through it, because that’s what hardworking, ambitious, competent people do.

Those hardworking folks who just can’t catch the break or who just aren’t being paid enough to stay in front of all the fees the world throws at you for being completely broke?

Well, clearly you must not have been very hard-working. Same to those of you who are broken under the strain of poverty and the way it gets you to devalue yourself to the point of suicide.

I mean, come on people, this just world fallacy isn’t going to delude itself!

God bless them. I pray for them and their families.

That’s great. I’m sure, those prayers will fill their bellies and get them enough gas to get to their shitty shitty jobs.

But then there’s the other sort of unemployed person; the sort who’s unemployed because they deserve to be unemployed. They drift around like dried up leaves, floating on the breeze. They expect to do nothing, make no attempt to better themselves or their situation, and still have society hand them their “due.”

Most people know them by the name “republican pundits”.

Seriously, leave aside the whole “if you don’t fit into a capitalistic framework or you’re unlucky or traumatized you deserve to die” thing, and just focus on the massive IT’S ALWAYS PROJECTION.

No one on this small blue rock deserves less their massive salaries and guaranteed employment than the lazy, incurious, deliberately ignorant fucks that make up the popular right-wing and their corporate owners.

In fact, the continued success of these cretins is probably the best counterargument available to this nonsense and its pretenses of a meritocracy where all the starving poor can be rationalized as “human failures” who “brought it upon themselves”.

Which is why I’d love to see them get the “true meritocracy” world they claim to want just to see the look on their faces as all those
“undeserving” and suspiciously swarthy-looking underclasses rise up into their positions and they are left with only their raw skills and their passion for self-improvement to carry them through.

Because I’m a petty bitch.

Some nefarious forces want us to pretend that this kind of person doesn’t exist.

They’re liars. And their lies aren’t doing anyone any favors.

Yeah, take that scienamatists! You may come in here with your “facts” and your “studies”, but damnitt we know in our heart of hearts that everyone living in Skid Row deserves to be there. And not at all because to think otherwise might involve acknowledging the human cost of the economic policies we supported only because we wanted to punish brown people and women for getting uppity.

Here’s a bit of hard truth: if you’re young and you have no dependents, no serious responsibilities, no mortgage, no spouse, nothing but yourself to worry about — there is little excuse to be unemployed for very long.

Indeed? My word, it must be because there are enough jobs to serve everyone who is dedicated to finding one? Especially for those who are just starting out and competing for entry level spots with people with 5+ years experience laid off in the previous cycle.

But sorry, I seem to be interrupting, please go on.

Once you’ve grown a little, and your life is complicated, and you’ve got kids and houses to pay for, being unemployed is a different situation entirely. You can’t just take any old job because any old job won’t be enough to fulfill your myriad of financial obligations.

Riiiight. Of course. If you’re a proper tribe member, denoted by your fulfillment of middle-class suburban fantasy, then clearly, your failure to find a job because the economy is shit is because the economy is shit. But if you’re some nasty snot-nosed kid who has the unmitigated gall to be younger than I am and thus a source of envy and hatred, then clearly your inability to find a job is due to your inherent laziness and inability to make jobs automagically appear out of your ass.

Duh.

But you’re 23 years old with no kids and nobody depending on you for anything? Put on a collared shirt and some khaki pants, hit main street and fill out applications in every store, shop, restaurant and business until you find something. Anything. If need be, get up tomorrow and do it again. And then again the next day. And the next day. And the next day. Put some pep in that step, decide what you want, and then go out and grab it. If you want a job – go get one. ANY one. There’s far too much apathy and far too many excuses polluting the environment in our society. I can barely breathe; the fog of “blah” is so thick.

Ok.

Yeah, just going to stop you right the fuck there.

First of all, yeah, let’s talk about the bullshit way companies directly use “appearance” (which almost universally means is the applicant middle or upper class enough to own expensive interview clothes, or is willing to be or act white and male enough to be deemed “employable”) as a substitute for qualifications.

Cause, it’s kinda appalling in a system like ours where employment is literal life or death that we’ve allowed “being read as a middle-class white male” to be the most important sign of being a “professional”. It allows unconscious biases to roam free and only serves as a mechanism of forcing a particular form of normativity with the threat of economic failure and the fatal consequences that go with that.

A suit is just that. And the way we’ve prized suits and haircuts over knowing a damn thing is why so many upper managements are filled with the least qualified upper class twits on the planet.

Second, “hit main street”. Now, unless your picture is about 40 years old, you are WAY too damn young to be this damn archaically ignorant about the way the world works.

As you yourself noted, there ain’t no main street to walk into and anyone who actually goes to the effort of asking for a position directly from an employer is more likely to be given the runaround and a sneer for wasting the underpaid worker’s time than it is to be given an application.

You can throw your resume down the internet hole and hope for the best. And as you say, you can do that again and again and again and again.

Cause, see, that whole process, of sending and sending and reducing your standards and just being willing to accept anything and still not being able to find anything or receive much of any response, much less an interview?

It has a nasty tendency to break you. You might have a decent level of self-esteem, but that first year, two years, three years of putting out multiple applications a day and getting nothing will convince you that the world is right and you really are less than worthless. It will fill you with guilt every second you are not doing applications until you find yourself incapable of doing even the most basic psychological maintenance.

And that’s before we get to the way poverty breaks you. The way being hungry makes it nearly impossible to focus on anything. The way the constant stress and threat of death leaves you a PTSD-stricken mess incapable of relaxing and filled with constant shame at the very notion of asking for help because clearly you are worth nothing. The way the depression eels its way inside until you can barely get up and force yourself through the Sisyphean slog and every lost day to the disease just allows you to self-abuse harder.

And then you add all the abuse that assholes who lucked into jobs back in the days that there was a strong job market and all one needed to do to get a decent paying middle class job with health care was show up regularly will gladly throw at you in order to feel better about their good fortune. Telling you that you’re lazy and “not trying hard enough” and what you need to do is apply for jobs every day as if you didn’t just spend the last 12 hours of every day doing just that.

And even if you find something, many somethings, it don’t even add up to a living wage and despite working 7 days a week, it just can’t pay the bills and it’s still somehow your fault for sucking that bad.

Yeah, you try staying sane through all that, and then you can look down on all us “lazy bastards” and our greed.

Oh and lastly, our generation, as it were, “thumbs its nose at the shit jobs” because you spent the last 3 decades making it nearly impossible to pay for college in any other way than going into massive student loan debt.

And since that shit kicks in fast and has a monthly cost that would make your eyes bleed before you factor in the high cost of gas, food, rent, etc…, one simply cannot afford to take minimum wage jobs and hope to survive.

And on a separate note, if one needs a fucking college degree to work at McDonalds then well, that’s a system that’s about 10 years away from some rich fuckers being stuck on the tops of pikes.

Which brings me to my final note.

Fuck you, you asshole and your accusations of apathy. Especially as you are in the midst of a whiny privileged rant about how much you hate the fact that you’re expected to care about the suffering of others.

It physically pains me to see some young guys — right around my age — stumble into a place half awake, mutter a couple phrases to the cashier, then shuffle out, and consider that another successful stop in their “job hunt.”

It’s a job HUNT, bro. Go hunt. Is this how you’d hunt for wild game? Do you wander into the forest, say “deer,” wait for a minute, give up and head to Denny’s?

We live in a post-industrial commercial society. Unless you’re living in the mountains and eating only the food you kill with the bear hands you killed with your bare hands, then most fucking people are going to be eating some level of pre-pepared meal. Hell, even the people who go down to the farmer’s market to hand-select organic vegetables to delicately prepare for a complicated raw vegan meal still nonetheless depend on others to plant, grow, harvest, transport, wash, and present them.

Also, uh, yeah, not sure if it’s best for you to be suggesting that poor desperate people should treat a job search much in the way one would the stalking and killing of a living creature. Unless you are looking forward to poor people stabbing every rich fuck they see and taking their money and sustenance for their own.

Where’s your determination? Where’s your “give me a chance, I’ll do anything” spirit?

Off deciding how much prostitution they’ll have to perform in order to pay rent this month?

Young people used to be revolutionaries. They used to be worldshakers. They used to be radicals, I’m told.

It’s like these fuckers are daring us to bring forth the cliffotines.

They used to say, “give me a job cleaning toilets, and next week I’ll run this place.”

Yeah, and then it became abundantly clear that not only was there no possibility that someone cleaning toilets would ever be promoted to the positions of those in upper management, but there was no possibility that we’d even be hired cleaning toilets.

Sorry, jackasses, but you can’t break the system and then blame us for failing to fix it from the outside.

They used to be on fire with determination and ambition. They used to have dreams and they used to live and die for those dreams.

Yeah, we also used to have a robust safety net, a 90% upper limit tax rate, which allowed entrepreneurs to try new things and take risks without worrying about the ability to eat.

Cause, see, the funny thing about desperation is that it makes it real fucking hard to focus on one’s “dreams” or feel safe trying anything other than participating in madcap desperation and futile hope for a breath of fresh air.

Some of my fellow young people still fit this bill. But too many, FAR too many, are closer to my pal in line this afternoon. Plenty of older folks have a similar apathetic demeanor, but it’s more problematic in my generation. It’s more problematic because 1) we’re the future, and 2) it’s wholly unnatural for us to be indifferent. We’re supposed to be the energetic, wide eyed rebels. We’re supposed to be the ones climbing the mountains and conquering the planet.

Instead, many of us sit around waiting for a genie to materialize in our living rooms and hand us a six figure income, a nice car, a house and a 401k.

Not all of us. Not me. Hopefully not you. But many.

Honestly, I joke, but this is just fucking sad.

This is the “young” version of the Gay Patriot twits or those black conservatives on American Thinker writing about how the segregationists are right and the existence of black people is destroying America.

Pandering broken wretches, so desperate to be considered honorary “safe group” that they’re willing to say anything to endear themselves to their oppressors and help them rationalize the horrible way they treat people just like them.

No, see, it’s okay, it’s not our hatred of young people as an externalization of our hatred of the way history has moved on without us. I mean after all, one of them is saying we are right and those older people we know who don’t have jobs are undergoing a bad turn, but those damn young-uns are just lazy nogoodniks!

Matt, honey, this ain’t going to save you. All that bitterness, all the attempts to destroy you, all the ways the planet left to us is broken and running out of stuff is going to fuck you just as strongly as it fucks us.

And as soon as they’ve gotten their fill, they’ll move on to the next paid shill to fluff their ego and tell them the fellow kids are not alright and you’ll be right there with the rest of us with only your wits and passion for hard-work to save you.

In other words, when we get to the Soylent Green factory, remind me to tell you I told you so.

But we can’t have honest conversations about anything in this country full of overly sensitive wimps.

Yes, that’s true. We can’t have an honest conversation about the actual state of the economy. Those who are willing to see millions die and suffer unnecessarily just to compete in a meaningless numbers game with other rich douchebags. The way we can’t talk about the intersection of oppressions or the way privileges blind the powerful to what it truly means to be marginalized or impoverished.

Every time we could sit down and really deconstruct exactly why so many are unemployed or underemployed or why new incoming workers need so many more skillsets than what was required before for more relative pay, we’re interrupted by some overly sensitive wimps slamming their fingers into their ears and loudly screaming about how young people are lazy and apathetic and how good jobs are everywhere. But I’m glad you-

So when the subject of unemployment comes up, particularly unemployment among 20-somethings, nobody is allowed to suggest that, possibly, SOME of these unemployed folks just AREN’T TRYING HARD ENOUGH. We’re not allowed to say that.

Ah, right, I’ll just wait until you’re done screaming.

And when the subject of any other problem arises, we’re not allowed to acknowledge the existence of the people who cause their own troubles.

And we’re definitely not allowed to acknowledge the existence of the people who cause everyone else’s troubles. Because then we’d have to accept the consequences of our political victories and the credit for those policies we spent so long fighting for.

I mean, it’s just not fair! No one said that this politics game would actually affect anything real!

Because of this, many who desperately need a swift kick in the butt must now be deprived of it. This is a grave injustice — both to the would-be kickee, and the willing kickers. I consider it my mission to remedy this situation, for the sake of both parties.

I’M SUCH A MANLY TOUGH MANLY MAN TOUGH MAN! BELIEVE ME! BEEEELLLLLLIIIIEEEEVVVVEEEE ME!

But seriously, to wrap this overlong point up, this post and the endless onslaught of Obamacare posts are kind of two sides of the same coin.

Both are about hiding and obfuscating a very radical idea.

The idea that those who are not “approved” by being appropriately rich, white, male, heterosexual, cissexual, Republicans deserve to die.

That life, itself is a privilege only allowed to those select few in order to spare them the pain of having to acknowledge people other than them exist.

We can’t have health care for all, because the lines will be too long or companies won’t be able to spam people. We can’t have a living wage, because some people don’t deserve jobs or money or any of the goods or services that those buy.

And while the current situation of desperation, disease, and death might seem like a win-win for conservatives, there’s only so much further this can go before there is literally nothing to lose breaking things open. Which may very well explain the frantic panicked method by which the rich paid the police forces to “get rid” of the Occupy problem.

But driving it underground doesn’t change the reality or the shrinking amount of options towards resolving this crisis peacefully.

In short, if you fuckers want to go a couple more decades still connected to your neck, you might think about letting the damn Democrats slightly improve the most broken systems.

Or not. The choice is yours.

---

‘Shorter’ concept created by Daniel Davies and perfected by Elton Beard. The Revolution will be recorded on smart phone and put onto YouTube. We are aware of all Internet traditions.™

---

*ADDENDUM:

Today is Transgender Day of Remembrance.

Other communities get to spend their special days, the ones that are most about them, with a sense of celebration. We in the trans* community mourn our fallen.

That list is only a small sample of those who have been murdered because of their trans* identities, because of what someone else thought of a reality that is just as biological as sexuality or skin color. And that in turn is a small sample of those who have died in general.

Thanks to an intense societal bigotry, suicide remains one of the highest killers of trans* people out there with about 1/3 of our number exiting by our own hands.

And that horrifyingly high number itself pales in the number of those who have suffered violence in general, either by those external or in the form of oppression-related self-injury.

Not that far from me, an agender teen, just riding on the bus was set on fire, because some other kid, raised in our diseased culture, thought it was an appropriate way to “correct” the offense of someone existing near him.

On the list of the fallen, the descriptions betray the brutality of the “corrections” that trans* people face. Stoned, beheaded and burned with our partners, scalped and tortured, tied to concrete and thrown in a pond, or:

tied up, beaten with fists and other objects, choked with a chain, had a bag taped over his head, shot, set on fire, and discarded into a dumpster.

Which occurred in this country. To a young kid no more than 22. A “punishment” all to many feel safe performing against those whose only crime was to be assigned the wrong sex and suffer through the wrong puberty and dare to exist where others can see them.

When I was a kid, my friends abandoned me, smelling a queerness on me that it would take years to see myself. When I was in college, a man threw a plate of food at my head because he could tell something I hadn’t yet had the courage to see. When I finally started to be true to myself, I was spit upon on the street, stalked, harassed, raped, discriminated out of a job, disowned by parents, and impoverished to a point so filled with shame that I don’t always know how to look at myself.

And yeah, I’ve been among those number who’ve injured themselves and those who’ve tried to check out early, but…

And here’s the bit that I think prevents this day from being only a wallowing in the oppression and pain and suffering inflicted upon us.

I still wouldn’t continue denying this for the world. This is what I am, what we are. Whether we are a snarky asexual transwoman writing overlong overly personal asides on their blog or a genderqueer leather boi, we exist.

And we’re not going away just because some would see us dead than see us at all. Because this gender dysphoria, this trans* state of existence is true and resolving it, despite all the shit they throw at us is so much more healing and joyous than the crap they use to try and make us fear it.

I’m damn glad to stand up for myself and my brothers, sisters, and non-binary-gendered siblings. And I will try and carry on the memory of the far too many who weren’t allowed to have that chance.

We miss you. We will always miss you.

Our valued commenter Murc took a job at Macy’s. When he was hired, the company gave him a lovely anti-union pamphlet. He then sent it to me. I have photographed and it and am providing it for you to see. You’ll notice a couple of things. First, while such a pamphlet is legal, it’s brimming with half-truths about unions that are intended to do a combination of scaring workers and making them think a union is a waste of their time and money. The highlight for me is when Macy’s says a union can’t guarantee workers benefits; technically true but what it really shows is just that Macy’s is going to refuse to negotiate for higher wages with a union. After all, “neither party is required to make a concession.” Ah. My second favorite line is about how workers once needed unions but “Today, workers no longer need a group to fight for these rights. They are guaranteed by law.” If I was drinking water when reading then, I would have done a spit take. Anyway, the more we publicize the anti-union activities that goes on behind the scenes, the better. I just am showing the text side of the pamphlet, which has most of the good stuff.

Now, I don’t think there is any kind of campaign to organize department store workers, at least nothing I know of. But remember, you don’t have to pay a union money to work here. Of course, without a union you won’t actually make any money.

This is a kind of hybrid column, half Q&A and half guest post.  A reader sent me the photo below, and wanted to know if I could tell him anything about it (you’ll see why he thought I might in a moment).  Well, everything I know about art wouldn’t even make a whole column, but the essence of librarianship isn’t knowing information directly, but rather knowing where to find it.  So I asked Aspasia Bonasera, who happens to be an art historian in addition to a sex worker, and she provided the analysis below.  I hope you find it as interesting as I did.

In the early eighties I found this de-framed painting in an antique store in Wisconsin.   An older couple who ran the store said it had come up the river from Storyville to Chicago, where they got it in an estate sale, along with its anecdotal provenance.  Seems it was cut from its frame in great hurry, then later “framed” in something that was at some point painted dark brown…

This painting was done in oil on canvas.  Primary colors dominate, though the palette is vibrant; the paint quality is average to maybe slightly above average.  The canvas itself looks to be average quality as well (cotton or low-grade linen), so this painting was either done by an artist without a lot of money to spend on finer, linen canvases or someone who paints as a hobby.  This says to me that it probably wasn’t a commission or if it was, it was not commissioned by someone with a lot of money for the project.  Commissions are generally done with the best materials the artist has access to, and it is not unusual for the patron to provide these finer materials.

The painting was originally larger; the female subject’s foot is clearly cut off at the bottom of the canvas where it was cut and re-framed.  There could be any number of reasons for this; for example, if the painting was commissioned for one patron but the deal fell through for reasons unknown to us, another patron may have bought it but asked that it be scaled down to fit on their walls.  More than likely, I think this painting was cut and re-sized by the buyer rather than the artist.  So far as I can tell, there is no signature of the artist on the painting, which tells me it may have been located on the bottom of the painting, which has been removed.  If the artist had re-sized/re-framed the painting in his studio, he would have re-signed his creation.

The painting shows a classic Reclining Venus, which was a popular theme in antiquity and Renaissance paintings.  For example, the Venus of Urbino by Titian is a Reclining Venus.  Naturally, this would have been an appropriate subject for a brothel.  The two young men are almost satyr-like, especially their ears, which are almost pointed and their long, drawn faces.  Satyrs were known for their lust and high libidos and were often depicted with women who were equally lusty and wild, especially Maenads.  The presence of the men in a voyeuristic pose may also be influence by the Greek myth of the virgin huntress Diana being surprised at her bath by the hunter Actaeon, whom she punished for spying on her nudity by turning him into the very animal he hunts (see also Titian’s rendering of that story).  Unlike Diana, however, the woman in this painting, as a representation of Venus/Aphrodite quite enjoys being spied on, though she doesn’t make eye contact with the voyeurs but affects an aloofness that probably only intensifies their lust for her.  Appropriate for a sex worker!

The style reminds me the most of French Rococo artists such as Antoine Watteau, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, or François Boucher.  Fragonard and Boucher are known for their erotic arts and voluptuous pastoral scenes.  This painting shows nature as full and sensual and blossoming.  The style, in my opinion, is very strongly influenced by Fragonard, which brings me to a conundrum of my own.  Fragonard was very popular among the French aristocracy in the years leading up to the French Revolution.  When the Revolution occurred, Fragonard fell out of favor (as did Boucher) and his art was forgotten for many years; this included the time period in which Storyville would have existed.  That said, however, Fragonard may have fallen out of favor in mainstream art history, but perhaps he was still remembered among those who were outside of the mainstream, such as those people who still liked the voluptuous and erotic artistic expressions embodied by the Rococo?  Certainly there would have been those among the elite classes of the French Creole in New Orleans who may have had Fragonard paintings (or at least known who he was) and also patronized Storyville.

Obviously without more to go on, this analysis is purely speculative, though based in what I have learned in my course work.  I would love to know more about it, though, as I always love investigating that intersection of sex and art.  If the reader really wants a thorough, in-person investigation, I suggest contacting a gallery that is in New Orleans itself, such as M.S. Rau Antiques; in Chicago, there are a whole bunch of places that could do the job as well.