Is the US a dystopia?

there is something to be said about the fetish as invented through encounters between colonial anthropology and "spooky" supposedly arbitrary and irrational indigenous spiritual/social/economic practices. there is something spookily recursive about the concept in that it itself is a fetish object by its own terms within European philosophical discourse. the Marxist inversion of this is in identifying the fetish at work within the supposed rationality of the capitalist economy (whereas for Hegel the fetish concept was a fetish that self-evidently demonstrated Euro/German superiority)

it's a leaky concept that seems to spill over into everything- in sexual terms you can define anything other than PiV-sex-for-procreation as a fetish but you can *also* define this ideal as a fetish (there's that recursivity again)

identifying transness as a fetish seems to be about (among other things) a perceived rejection of or lack of functionality within this specific fetishised mode of reproduction - in this vein the fetish object is transness-as-fetish

not sure where I'm going with this either

― Left

i was talking with my physical therapist about this general topic just now - the disparities between transmasc and transfem experiences. some people get all discoursey and get way into "effemimania" and start talking about baeddels and that's not where i'm coming from. however, to me, the subject-as-object framing of "fetish" framing like autogynephilia say something about patriarchal social norms. people like ray blanchard fetishize us, but since he's in a position of systemic power, he can say that _we're_ the ones with the fetish, not him. why did this framing hold up for so long? i think a large part of it has to do with the refusal to acknowledge that members of "marked" groups can legitimately have and express desires. this is one of the reasons medieval european patriarchy fascinates me so - because it framed women as creatures of insatiable desire, as temptresses. the framing is the opposite now, but the underlying principle is still there. if women express desire, men are not held responsible for the way they treat those women. women are held responsible.

this has long been something that really interests me... confusion between subject-object, between _being_ and _possessing_. one of the classic transfem quandries is "do i want to _be_ her or do i want to be _with_ her?" the resolution to this is often dialectical, often takes a both-and perspective. there are lots of ways kink and capitalism intersect in interesting and challenging ways for me. a lot of times kink is a way of reclaiming agency. like, marked gender groups are openly treated as chattel, as nothing more than baby incubators, and at the same time, breeding kinks are a lot more popular than i remember them being. the thing that's being reclaimed is one's ability to _choose_. the fetish is, in many cases, a rejection of socially imposed norms. for instance, a trans woman may have an objectification kink. that's something that's easy to see as problematic - feminism works so hard to gain equal rights for women and these people _want_ to be objectified? the thing that gets missed is that it's a reclamation of the right of marked groups to have _choice_, to have _desire_. even though dominance and submission are typically relationships between individuals (i am _not_ getting into the semiotics of polycule consent arbitrage here), it rejects "implied consent" and makes power imbalance explicit and visible.

tl;dr to me trans fetishization to me reflects a patriarchal sense of entitlement to control and ownership of the bodies of people from "marked" groups, and a patriarchal belief that unmarked groups possess a monopoly right to the legitimate use of desire.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/02/gofundme-health-care-hospitals/677353/

Subhead from an article Apple News just pushed to me: "Resorting to crowdfunding to pay medical bills has become so routine, in some cases medical professionals recommend it."

😣

I’m glad these resources exist to be able to help people in medical crises (and other crises!) but it sucks that conditions are such that there aren’t built in societal safety nets

Yeah, I've donated to several health-related GoFundMe or similar efforts for people I know. It's awful and I hate that it exists, but I'm glad it can help some people. The thing I will just never understand is why so many people put up with this punishing bullshit when much better possible systems exist that wouldn't even cost us any more cumulatively. We are just voluntarily putting ourselves through this over and over.

I think it's plausible it's not us putting us through this over and over but rather someone, or maybe rather some few, instead

tipsy omg that is exactly where i often sit-- when talking to people, right and left of me, i find myself going "well, for a moment please really remember, and really think-- it doesn't HAVE to be like THIS-- and we have a reasonable system for that to do."

Which is not to say the system always gets fair results, nor that it is the only system. Nor best system. Mostly it's down to many many peopl e being honest,clear, and urgent. Often while suffering or witnessing it at at the hands of a-holes.

oth i guess, if all you do is what you've been doing, all you reasonably will get is the same.

I think it's plausible it's not us putting us through this over and over but rather someone, or maybe rather some few, instead

Yes, sure, but we do actually have the power to change it. There is just a significant part of the population essentially brainwashed into thinking that somehow this is the best we can do. And unlike climate change, which requires some awareness of things beyond your own household to get a grip on, most people have direct, personal experience with the shittiness of our health care system. At a certain level, we are choosing this.

It's honestly just very difficult to get yourself outside of. How could a system as implacable and hostile and complex as the American health insurance system could ever be rethought? When I tell people I can see a doctor whenever I want without paying anything or filling out any forms, all without insurance, they literally don't understand what I'm talking about, it's like the Westworld robots who are like "it doesn't look like anything to me"

The fact that democrats in congress have refused for nearly two decades to use simple majorities to push these things forward just illustrates how entrenched it all is. It is hard to believe they actually want to change it until they prove otherwise.

The first thing they must do as a majority is eliminate the 60-vote threshold. Then we'll see if they're serious about serious health care.

exactly

The insurance lobby holds much more sway than does the patient lobby.

The patients are sick and tired of struggling to extract the necessary care from the system. But too sick and tired to be an effective lobby.

Just want to recommend (again) Metzl’s book Dying of Whiteness. The chapter focusing on Tennessee literally gives many pieces of evidence that white people would rather struggle and die earlier without more accessible health coverage if having accessible health coverage means Black and Brown people get it, too.

Thanks, table - just borrowed that from my library.

xp perhaps if we looped in free pet health insurance as part of the deal?

(Kinda-sorta not joking about that)

Yes, sure, but we do actually have the power to change it.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra)

that's the crux of it, isn't it? _we_. the people united will never be defeated, and the ruling class, i figure at least _some_ of them must know that. by myself, what power do i have? to vote in rigged elections? i work for an insurance company. and what? i've been looking for different jobs for months now. "the tech job market is bad", they say. "the big companies are all taking on freelancers", they say. well, what? we have no rights. we have no collective power. i talked to a friend this morning. "how you been?" i ask. "alive," she answers. she says she doesn't know if she could work again if she lost the job she has. i feel the same. i feel like i'm hanging on by my fingernails here. i fucking hate my job, and i'm fucking terrified of losing it. my girlfriend decided she's going in for disability. one doesn't want to go that route, trying to spend all that time and effort convincing capital that you belong on the _other_ side of the balance sheet, that you're better off trying to live on the table scraps people begrudgingly throw at you, but what else is there, these days?

today at my team meeting we're talking about the results of the "engagement survey". the scores are pretty low. particularly, it seems like most people have some pretty bad burnout, and there's a lot of dissatisfaction with senior management. senior management say that they are taking the results of this survey _very_ seriously and that they are going to work _very_ hard to fix things. in the meantime the two most senior managers in the department have quit. one of them has decided he'd rather be a high school math teacher. god, maybe i should have been a high school math teacher.

at least i won't be shot for singing, right? i'm a free agent. i can protest.

Just want to recommend (again) Metzl’s book Dying of Whiteness. The chapter focusing on Tennessee literally gives many pieces of evidence that white people would rather struggle and die earlier without more accessible health coverage if having accessible health coverage means Black and Brown people get it, too.

― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table)

i mean, that's the thing, right? i can try and tell the dispossessed rust belters that we're on the same side, that we can work together and oppose oppression, but we're not on the same side, really, because they care more about my _dick_ than they do about their _own fucking lives_. these folks who are dying of whiteness - it doesn't fucking matter to them, because it's always the Black and Brown people who die _first_.

and that's why i'm so fucking cold, when it comes to a lot of people who are suffering. if someone can find it in themselves to care for one god-damned second for somebody who's not _like_ them, these are the people i care about. anybody who can't, well, they can fucking die alone.

God bless the USA, beacon of democracy, where almost everything we buy or look at has the stink of slavery on it

https://apnews.com/article/prison-to-plate-inmate-labor-investigation-c6f0eb4747963283316e494eadf08c4e

i agree it’s horrendous. thank god it cannot get any worse.

of course it can.

i think that was irony, but how to be sure?

i understood that, fwiw

i know how smart you both are so i don’t worry about you catching my tone, and to the extent i am myself dumb or rude, i do beg forgiveness.

i mean that.

and still yeah, irony

It sure is surprising that we have slavery going on in prisons 150 years after we passed a constitutional amendment explicitly allowing slavery in prisons.

Yeah, who could have seen that coming?

Lock it up

Just like we drew it up. pic.twitter.com/9NBvc5nVZE

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) February 12, 2024

https://theweek.com/business/economy/gen-z-work-child-labor

Thousands of teens are revitalizing the part-time job market. It is a significant shift for Gen Z, with an increasing number of them seeking after-school and summer jobs, "reversing a trend of forgoing work when millennials were teens," The Washington Post said in a recent analysis.

"You know, in the last year or two, they've really helped keep the service sector going," said Abha Bhattarai, economics analyst for the Post, to Marketplace. Several restaurant owners told her that if it were not for the influx of teens working for them, "they just would have had to shut down by now."

Still, this galvanizing employment trend seemingly has an underbelly, as the recent boost in child labor law violations highlights.

last line made me lol, what a country!

Keeping them at work under the watchful eye of bosses is the only way to protect them from classroom groomers and adrenochrome harvesters.

my state's rolled back a bunch of controls and 16 year old grocery store cashiers can sell liquor again

yet there's a dark side to this dark underbelly

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/feb/12/immigrant-child-laborers-killed-factories-osha

also their skin has a tough, sour flavour when cooked, some theorise that heavy vaping is to blame

Still, this galvanizing employment trend seemingly has an underbelly, as the recent boost in child labor law violations highlights.

That's the most coldly evil sentence I've read in a news story in a while.

Hmm. In my world, children cannot (and probably should not) get jobs. The jobs that teenagers used to do (mowing, shoveling, burger-flipping, golf caddying, retail cashiering) now go to adults who need them to feed families.

(Which is itself troubling enough.)

Paper routes

I had a paper route, it was awful - I was classified as an 'independent contractor' and had to buy my own rubber bands and plastic bags, and do the collections

Pretty sure I was making about ninety-one cents an hour, if that

I'm not quite sure what you're saying YMP, but:

At least 250,000 more teenagers are now working compared to before the pandemic, part of a gradual but consequential shift that is boosting employment at restaurants and stores, and changing cultural norms. In all, 37 percent of 16- to 19-year-olds had a job or were looking for one last year, the highest annual rate since 2009, according to Labor Department data.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/01/21/teen-jobs-pandemic-wages/

"looking for one" is a bit squishy, but children/teenagers can and do get jobs

Yeah, it was a shit job, but now it's all done by adults. At least they don't have to go door-to-door to collect anymore.

I hear there's big money to be made in print journalism

I had a paper route too and I liked it, outside of having to get up early on Sundays. getting a bunch of tips on Christmas would be awesome too like suddenly I'd have $200

they wanted us to deliver samples of random products, mostly cleaning stuff. I always just gave 'em all to my Mom, lol

the collection thing *did* suck but luckily everyone in my neighborhood was nice. some of these folks fell so far behind though

Lol jimbeaux, you say that as if newspapers still exist.

I never had a paper route but was definitely carrying golf bags at 12, bussing tables at 13, laying out newspapers at 15, waiting tables at 16, selling clothes at 18... I have worked constantly since 1981.

But my children? We just spent a week on a single camp-counselor application and the idea of McDonald's (or whatever) seems like a non-starter.

Rob, I'm not sure what I'm saying either (apart from what I have already said). But it is a different employment landscape now, and I don't think that is a controversial statement.

Lol jimbeaux, you say that as if newspapers still exist.

I have a friend that helps his day by delivering NYT print edition, but it's mostly to stores, not to individual residences

We still get the daily paper, and I get my wife the print NYT every Sunday.

When I was working at grocery stores from 5PM on everyone working front of house was a high school student, if we needed an adult we’d have to call up a manager from stocking or another department.

I’m terrible at guessing ages but it’s been a long time since I’ve seen a grocery store crew that seemed to have anyone I’d assume to be a high school kid.

the Piggly Wiggly here has kids who I think aren't even in high school. I remember seeing one who looked like he was almost my son's age! (my son is 9) he was super nice too! but there's no way he was older than 13!