Problem Chlyde has a beautiful post on the view that poor people shouldn't have nice things. I connect it to the idea that you should have a horrible life unless you were perfectly moral and never did anything wrong in your life. "Wrong" is pretty loose here- it can be anything from owning a television to only working eight hours a day instead of 18. It's the sort of attitude that ends with people lecturing small children on the virtues of hard work because they asked for some chips.

I think really we should stop hewing to the whole idea that basic rights like food, shelter, health care, etc, should be doled out based on how moral we think people are. That's why they are called rights. People inherently deserve food, water, shelter, health care. We don't starve the very worst, the dregs of society- the psychopaths who have killed and raped and maimed. We don't force them to freeze in the cold.

We understand that to have a civilized society, we need to guarantee certain things even to the worst people. So why the hysteria if we see a poor person with a cell phone slightly nicer than we think they should have? Why the OMG, HOW DARE SHE HAVE SHELTER GIVEN TO HER IF SHE REPRODUCED IN A WAY I DON'T AGREE WITH? We have more moral outrage over seeing a woman put 2 for $5 bacon wrapped steak fillets in her cart than we do over the war in Afghanistan and the flooding in Pakistan.

When we have a society, people have rights. That means that poor people can have entertainment and beauty in their lives, people can work hours that allow them to have lives not just a living, and yes, families can be started, and children cherished even if the conditions aren't perfect. We just need to stop being assholes.

On the #browntwitterbird issue:

DR Goddess reflects on how on twitter, we're a community. When I use twitter, I want a far flung wide reaching conversation not just a one way watching Kayne tweet.

Shani-O unraveals the 'mystery' of black folks using twitter- it's adapted to mobile internet.

Yep, black folks with similar interests cluster. People don't wonder why etsy folks use twitter or why manga obsessives use twitter. I mean as this lady says, there's no just one black twitter. Activists group, rap folks group, people who spend all their time on twitter obsessing about Arcade Fire and Scott Pilgrim group.

We all have our baseline 'blackness'- American blackness, British blackness, Carribean blackness, African blackness- all different. But within that blackness, there's multitudes. Multitudes who want you to know that #itsallfunandgamesuntil

I wish we could bring up stuff without it being about white folk's feelings and shit.

Eh, welcome to the world of us plain women, lady. Many folks didn't have looks to trade off when they were young. That said, age discrimination is real. The sad part is that people are living longer nowadays, and soon we'll have more people over 60 than kids under 5.

People aren't like machines. We can't toss them out because they are old. Of course people of my generation are also screwed with huge amounts of debt, and of course, merely being young doesn't make us able to work 18 hour days without cracking, despite the myth.

Man, folks who say ghetto for bad drive me nuts.

A collection on radical mothering? Awesome.

MS tells men to step up and be accountable for sex trafficking.

We've all been deputized into the parenting police. Should she[it's always on a she] have had so many? Should she have waited? Should she have had some sooner? The list of ticketable offenses is long- too young, too black, too undocumented, too poor, too single.

So I don't really feel annoyed that after being told that their mothering, their babies are invading the United States, that if single black women just got married all problems in the black community would vanish like a dream, that their darn hellions are the downfall of the American empire, they would embrace mothering.

After dealing with all the judgment based on half overheard conversations in grocery stores, half forgotten news articles, and whatever the relative someone hates the most supposedly did, who could blame folks for saying fuck you, I'm a mother?

Motherhood has not always been seen as an apolitical state of preventing only one's own children from eating their own poop. In fact, the root of Mother's Day was for mothers to use their moral position for political power! Let's reclaim motherhood back for feminism*!

Stand up for mothers who have been told they are too poor, too disabled, too black, too brown, too asian to mother. Stand up against shackling mothers to beds, against the crime of ripping an infant from a woman who cries "I want my baby" night after night. Let's tear off our parenting police badges. Let's refuse to use them. Let's hold out our hands instead.
*with a small f.

Posts on children in public are a hot topic. This is because we have to share public space, and everyone has so many different mores[should children have more freedom or should they be more disciplined? How well behaved can we expect a child to be? What is the role of the parent and the role of the public in this?] and most of our desires are mutually exclusive.

I try to err on the side of not being the parent police, but due to long socialisation and general irritability, I often fail. Intellectually, I understand all that about the policing of women's reproduction, and the different standards for children of color, and there's also the issue of individualism versus community and different social mores[to me, a gun shop is not a family friendly space, to others, it is], but it's all such a jumble and a mess that I can't say anything coherent about it. So here's what other people think:

Ma'ia- ain't I a mama? Personally, I don't like even being mistaken for a mother in public, but I'll think on it.

Also, Karnythia has an opinion on this too. Although I'll note that Jack in comments might be talking about alcoholism there.

Support women and children's rights!

People w/ disabilites vs moms?

I think there has been a 'college bubble'. Costs have risen and risen, so much that homeless students aren't uncommon, and the rewards have gotten so low that privileged graduates are telling stories about how they are going to India to get a job. So higher costs with many working the same jobs they were working before college, with a lot more debt. This system is unsustainable.

News With Nezua | Our Post-Racial Paradise from nezua on Vimeo.

I wish this was shown on television or something.

You know, this is an awesome post on fear of female masculinity. How we're encouraged to go "We're not scary and masculine, oh no!" and Rachael Maddow is like fuck that! I like how I look!

But sadly, in the comments, we mostly hear about the problems of feminine lesbians, but at least we're not getting a lot of "those mean feminist hate how cute and pretty I am". Remember to make space for masculine women!

A post collecting almost everything I needed to link blog for months.

The human zoo- how humans of color are equated with animals. BTW: Have you ever noticed that cartoons with Africa as a setting always have animals as the characters?

Social Illiteracy- Why is the canon so narrow? The canon of one group might include Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Octavia Butler, and the canon of another might be Final Fantasy, Zelda, and Metroid. Who determines which makes one more intelligent or cultured?

I admit that it can really help to have a shared canon. Fun Home was a beautiful comic, but I felt that because I wasn't as familar with James Joyce and Proust as I might be, I lost a level of the meaning.

Behind Teach For America.

On Sick Systems.

I really like how they pointed out the problems of prostitution along with their push for legalization.

This is your brain on ADD.

Stop branding- start creating.

She's just now noticing that the icongraphy of video games is a language?

The floating castles of the super rich.

How hot we are or aren't has nothing to do with our opinions and our politics.

Feminism- hurting and saving.

This guy sure doesn't get twitter.

Fuck Seal Press.

Fuck Blockbuster. They may have allowed me to explore my interest in anime, with their scattered collection of half dubbed tapes, but their late fees, and harassing us for years because my brother had some, earned them my eternal hate. Good riddance.

Woman making sustainable homes for homeless.

A different reading of freedom.

100 years of hilarious beauty ads.

Hetronormative and silly rant slammed.

Amanda Marcotte, white feminist, hates sex! I mean, she doesn't exactly think that milk enemas and yelling slurs is sexual entertainment that really advances the feminist agenda, even though there was a WOMAN in it, making it automagically feminist!

I think this whole "anyone who even thinks that porn is less than feminist hates sex" meme is played out. One can have plenty of enjoyable bedroom activities[although it is alright not to have sex, btw] even if you think that slapping a woman, calling her a cunt, and suchlike doesn't exactly become non misogynistic because there's fucking there too.

My situation is I just graduated with my Master's degree and can't find a job in my field. I had an internship that was SUPPOSED to lead to a job, but the agency I worked for went on a hiring freeze, so after I graduated I was laid off from the internship so they could hire some fresh new interns instead (interns didn't count in the hiring freeze because they were part-time so they didn't need to pay them benefits, so it's cheaper to just hire a bunch of interns to do everything... bascially they would get the same amount of work out of two interns working 20 hours a week than one full time person, but more cheaply).

This commenter on slacktivist is discussing the intern problem. It's basically when Company X takes on 20 interns, but hires 1 or 0 graduates, and all the other companies do the same. This is a big problem as professionals can't get established, loans can't get paid back, and people with fewer qualifications are pushed out of low paying work.

Personally, I think they should have courtesy payments for interns to raise the price of interns, and make sure that the interns can buy some ramen.

Some people don't know what racist is. *shakes head* Folks hear the word racist and start repeating it even though they have no idea... It's like a little kid saying fuck.

I have no idea what's going on in Israel- apparently the ultra orthodox wants to challenge the Jewishness of people? And why can't women read the Torah at the Wailing Wall again?

Although I am surprised that this guy turned down a 40K job, this article does give us information about the many young people who are being frozen out of the job market- such as the 37% that are either out of the labor market or unemployed.

I also wonder if they take into account people who need a full time job to pay their bills, but can only get part time. I think that older people need to understand that while wages have stagnated, the price of college and housing have gone up, so a person could graduate with $5000 in debt, and be looking at a $1000 apartment, on $10 an hour, part time.

Not to mention, I have a strange theory. OK, I'm piggybacking on hard working people who have come up with spoon theory instead of doing what I should be doing- probably coming up with some of my own. Anyway, my theory is that some people can do five jobs and raise five kids and not collapse from exhaustion, while others, the best they can do is one job, and have a messy house. There of course are various reasons- some people use their energy on navigating obstacles like places that aren't accessible for people with mobility issues, and some folks are just plain born tired- this is me. My throat is sore, my head is aching, and my bones hurt.

People who are more 'able' are judgmental towards the rest of us, but sadly, that's not really any help. What you're able to do is probably worlds away from what the rest of us can do. You wouldn't expect a paraplegic to dance a jig...ok, maybe you would, but that would be wrong to do. Use some of your energy to understand the rest of us.

In political news, a tweeter called funkywhitegirl posted these pictures: 1 2 3 of an anti semetic anti Cohen, pro Herenton flyer she received. Now, we don't need this sort of rhetoric. It's unnesscary to put down Jews to build up blacks. Let's start arguing about merits, not who is a Jew and who is a Christian.

Also,
1,500 come to a job fair at the library. Notice that a social worker[needing at least a bachelor's] can not find work, even at Walmart. I don't think this recession can be 'retrained' out of.

Redemption, my ass! I don't care if Rihanna was the most bitchy jealous whatever in the fucking world, there's no excuse for beating her ass. We are so quick to blame black women. We buy into stereotypes that we're violent, mean, unlovable, deserving of dudes whaling on us. If we 'forgive' him, what are we telling our girls? That they don't matter? Fuck that shit.

Dude, chica's working for free, and doing you a service. I mean, I'm not saying people should wear flip flops in a hospital or something, but really? You're slamming some college student who is working for free because they wore flipflops? You should be glad anyone can afford to work for free in your for profit office.

Oh hell naw, I'm not forgiving Chris Brown. No excuses for violence. No, she hit him too shit [and notice that his face ain't battered. If one person is beat down and another is just fine- that shit ain't 'mutual abuse'.] We need to stop saying it's OK for a man to straight out punch a woman. Why? Because when we say "Oh, he's young! Oh, we can't blame him forever', a less famous, but no less violent guy will think that sort of behavior is OK.

And the violence in our cities and our homes will get worse and worse, and we'll wonder why.

Yea, I've always been suspicious of pushes for more PE, because 11 year olds running around a track and being mocked for not being very good tends to turn those kids off to exercise. And the truth is that ok, as an adult, how many of you go out and play competitive sports? So the intense focus on whether you can sink a basketball or play baseball seems unwarranted. They should teach kids exercises and movement that they can do for life. And parents need to have a hand in this too. Never pull a gun or use threats about sports. This teaches children that sports are so important, you should be violent about them.

And I do think there should be more fun sports for teens and up. I stopped doing track in high school because the focus went from do your best to OMG, WE GOT TO WIN! Now, I suck at running. I'm slow. But I think that we tend to think everyone can become the best if they just try hard enough. Now, that's not true at all. But everyone can try to do their best. Nowadays I feel happy because I've just learned to hula hoop. Small children can hula hoop better than me, but I've just beat my record!