Social Darwinism, Work, Education, Poverty, and death.

One of the things that I never understood about the way that our life in this country is structured is how miserable your supposed to be while engaging with it. There is so much misery involved in the everyday lives of human beings, especially those that live in poverty. this excess stress from always being in a state of precarity and being underpaid to take care of basic necessities. For impoverished college students, the cost of schooling and the menial work of trying to ensure that your institution grants you the correct amount of money to be able to cover tuition cost (and potentially room and board). For impoverished workers, there is always a threat to your employment that more likely than not doesn’t pay enough to survive. In an economy, where degrees are paradoxically more necessary than ever and historically undervalued, rent prices are going up exponentially, and school is more unnattainable for the working class since the 60s, we are expected to do school and work, and self management of the body all at full time. In these state of affairs, I wouldn’t be surprised if the ruling class is simply trying to get the poor citizens of america to just what they’ve wanted them to do forever: to die. The system that we are working within today is one that drives a working laboring body so far to the point of desiring death, and then punishing the unwilling participants for saying the desire outloud. their desires for the working body not to die does not come from care for the working body, but from the need to utilize the working body. the wealthy have already revealed to us years ago that they actually do not care about the well being of the poor. From the various austerity pollitics coming out of the Reagan era that created a profit incentive from credit and debt to as far back as victorian attitudes surrounding social welfare, the ruling classes have always made it clear that they do not believe that the poor actually deserve to live. Social Darwinism has been a long lingering school of thought among the wealthy, the idea that the economically strongest individuals should survive and those who fall short should die off. This is not only limited to financial success, but also ability, temperment, and perceived morality that many on the right is genetically inherited (essentially economic eugenics). However, If all of the working and lower class individuals just died, they wouldn’t be as economically “fit” as they are, as their wealth depends on the labor provided by the working class. If the stress and anxiety gets to a working class person to the point of them wanting to take their own life, the various institutions (educations, work, and family) will work to try and convince them to not take their own life, which may involve serious caring conversation or serious medicalization. I find it very funny that as much as the wealthy seems to not want the poor to be able to survive, they depend on their lives continuing in order for them to stay as comfortable as they are (sorry about this being a lot, i’m going through some stuff at the moment. I’m Okay, this post is just something i’ve been thinking about for a long time).

Autistic Masking & Trans Passing — The Venn Diagram is a Circle

Autistic people are a lot more likely than the neurotypical population to identify as transgender — something I personally chalk up to us having a keener eye for social norms that make no sense (the gender binary being no exception). As an autistic trans person who has to deal with the social repercussions of both these parts of myself, I have noticed how society is built not only to prioritize cisgender neurotypical people, but to actively shun those who don’t fit in either category in very similar ways.