It’s a good book which helps me wade through stuff like this.

Papi had an idea recently to give out holiday cards to the homeless people in our neighbourhood with money inside.

I work to get him to understand that offering the money in a card disguised as a gift, something intimate and friendly, was more about him than about them.

I said that he didn’t know whether they would be thankful for his gift, but that this would be the expectation.

Power. A feeling of well being and having been let off the hook in a situation that would probably give him more of a sense of well being than any of the people he was going to hand out his cards to.

I asked him why he didn’t just give them the money?

Which would put more of the power to decide how they would experience the offering in their hands…adults, not infantilized or dominated.

This is where I enter this post.

Urine tests be damned. That’s a shell, a package in which to contain the hidden truth that there needs to be an economic underclass so that the middle classes, ranks now bolstered by accredited midwives and the upper classes, will understand themselves, their lives, their families, their fraternities and their sororities, their children, their clubs and kaffe klatches as superior.

The infantilization, the: “Pee in the fucking cup and we’ll let you eat, let you sleep, let you be warm, let your children have clothes, let you function under a false veneer that allows you to experience your own decision making capacities within a very, very narrow range of possibilities which are all defined by us”…
That infantilization is at the root of poverty and what it means to not be monied.

People get to humiliate you. They get to reference your bodily functions and expect you to go along. They expect to substitute your decision making abilities with their own.

Fucking drug addicts?
How many middle class pot heads, functioning alcoholics, people who do pain killers at the drop of a hat, people who are on meds for emotional reasons…meaning they go to a middle man…unh doctor…for their dime bags…
How many do you know?

I know quite a few.

But, this is how the infantilization works. Once you’re poor, you have no privacy. Privacy is for the middle and upper classes. Privacy is for people who work…meaning they function as part of the capitalist system that is killing us all…meaning they cluck their teeth at people who won’t or can’t function as willing cogs in the capitalist wheel or who, when they try, can’t accrue enough money to build up credit so as to more deeply indebt themselves to that capitalist system, meaning that they must willingly involve themselves in it if they are to survive economically.

“These people” exist because company email exists, because legislation legitimizing the work of some, the contribution of some and denigrating the contributions of others, exists.

It’s a parcel deal.

My little coochie fairly shrinks at the idea of encountering a raging conservative midwife who would hold the view that a population of people should be controlled (through their pee) if they want to have access to the most basic survival means, touching me or being present at the birth of my child.

Midwives have come a long way, baybee.

Thanks for writing this and for trying to be brave. darkdaughta

About the workplace and email, if your address is issued by your employer they almost certainly have usage policies, and many include not using work email for personal use at all. Even if it’s not, being professional includes not subjecting your coworkers to your soapbox, their or yours. A short reply, “No forwards, please!” might be helpful.

Christine: welcome back!!

With work computers, a lot of times, people’s info is appended to the bottom of their emails, so if somebody spreads a chain letter on an office network, their info plus everybody else’s names and email addresses are on it. Then, if some other doofus actually likes the chain email enough to spread it, he/she will forward it on to a list of friends outside the office network, thereby spreading all the worker’s email addresses and names to a bunch of strangers. Then, if a friend of theirs likes the chain and passes it on, that list of emails along with their friends gets forwarded down to an even broader list of strangers and so on.

I think it’s even a violation of the rules in at least some work places to send chain letters. So, it might be a good idea to advise all on that recipient list to be more careful and not send forwards.

http://www.breakthechain.org is just one of the sites people can look to for some good info about these things.

About the chain letter itself, I completely agree with what you said about it. It was a whiny, even snooty piece of dreck. I really don’t see why whoever originated the chain letter in the first place, (long before it got to the person who sent it out at your work) is getting so worked up about pi$$ for anyway.

Seems to me a lot of netizens need to learn to stop whizzing in their friends’ inboxes with chain letters before getting all bent out of shape over the non-cyber whizz-tests.

And “getting a job” is a heck of a lot easier said then done, it’s not like going into a store and picking out some clothes. So many things factor into whether or not a person can even get into the door for an interview at all, and there are lots of job openings but with requirements that a lot of people just don’t have and can’t even get without experience and help.

Good post.

I would just reply to the sender. Then you’re not putting the sender under spotlight by copying everyone. Perhaps he/she will be more apt to listen and try to understand.

You’re still the coolest.

Christine