Can you imagine the changes to the workforce and how we treated workers if no one HAD to work to survive?
Like often I see these complaints about a universal basic income that are like “well then no one would work!” and I think there are lots of people motivated to have more money even when they have enough to get by, but I also I think, that’s kind of true, if regular employment looked and functioned the way it does now.
But with UBI if both employers and society wanted people in certain jobs those jobs would have to offer more than just “you need us to survive”. They’d have to offer satisfaction and community and purpose.
Imagine the changes places like WalMart and McDonalds would have to make to how they run their enterprise if they had to woo and entice their employees into wanting to be there. Imagine the end of “the customer is always right”, both because employers know their workers won’t put up with and because consumers are forced to have a respect for workers choosing to do this with their time to make the community function when they don’t have to.
Imagine the progress to automation and technology now that we don’t have to worry about unemployment as a result. So instead of a store having 40 employees, they have 10 and automated self check out and price scanners and store apps you can pay on, and automated self-driving bots to keep inventory and restock at night. (And that’s when you don’t just order online, shopping in-store is now inherently a Boutique experience).
But those ten remaining employees are So Valued by the company, and so carefully educated and trained and respected as experts in what they do. People go “you could do that when you grow up, help people shop and find what they need and know what products are best for them.” And it wouldn’t be an insult like “you’ll wind up flipping burgers”, but instead a respected option “you can help people have warm fresh food in one of the oldest and most prestigious international groups in the world, and look at their travel programs and free clubs and classes” (McDonalds wins the Fast Food Mario Kart Tournament every year, their team is best in the nation and if you want a good esports program you work at McDonalds).
Evidence shows people would still work. Evidence shows people want to improve their situations and want to have structure in their lives. Evidence shows the only populations who take advantage of a UBI to not work are students who choose to focus more on their studies and new mothers, who choose to spend more time with their kids.
But it would increase the bargaining power and social power of the average employee by so much. They’d have the option to walk away. And employers would know it and consumers would know it and employees would know it. So if we wanted it to keep working, employers would have to start catering to their employees wellbeing and health and happiness as well as their wallet.
In the few months I’ve been modding at fuckyeahasexual and touring ace Tumblr, there’s been a very. Steady. Stream of info that detail horrifically abusive situations and overall poor mental unhealth. Two a week in the inbox if I’m lucky, usually around seven-ten.
And there’s been so many, I can officially categorize all 500+ of these kinds of asks and submissions into an extensive bulletlist of Why Asexual Exclusionary Radicalism Is Incredibly Toxic And Shitty;
Coming Out To Family, Friends, And Employers
“My parents keep telling me that I’m something else, and it’s making me doubt my sense of judgement, not just about my sexual identity, but also about everything in general.”
“My family, friends, and co-workers keep referring to me as an inanimate object in a manner that’s clearly meant to humiliate and devastate me. Nothing I say will get them to stop.”
“My parents vocally/bodily forced me to undergo medical examinations, some of them concerning my sexual organs, many of them concerning blood tests and other trauma-centric procedures.”
“My family is intervening with my private life by changing my schedule to include exercise, socialization, friend influences, and whatever they think can ‘change’ me.”
“My friends/co-workers no longer respect my bodily boundaries when I came out to them, because they no longer see me as someone who should be respected. They regularly touch, fondle, grope, and prod me without permission, and/or verbally harass me, and don’t take my objections seriously.”
“My family, friends, and co-workers no longer just harass me, but also anyone I’m currently dating because they view my significant other as pathetic, underserved, or even being abused.”
First Few Days Of Dating
“My date got irrationally angry and confrontational when I came out to them, in a manner that made me fearful.” (SO many of these.)
“My date immediately lost any respect they had for my boundaries, no longer asked for consent, and {tried to} force themselves upon me.” (A lot of these, too)
“My date tried to verbally circumvent any boundaries and issues I confessed to, and it made me feel like I was in danger.”
“I didn’t come out to my date at first, and when they found out, they radically changed their behavior in an attempt to control and manipulate our new relationship to their benefit.”
Long-Term Relationships
“My partner has forcefully and radically changed our long-term relationship after finding out about my asexuality, and I’m now trapped and controlled in a way that I wasn’t before.”
“My partner broke up with me/is fighting with me because of my asexuality, and trying to make it seem like I’m hurting them. It’s made me doubt myself and my ability to trust my own intentions.”
“My partner is slowly changing from what was once supportive of my asexuality, and I’m wondering when I have the right to be worried and when I’d be overreacting. I’m aware of the worst case scenario, but I also worry that I’m being selfish and childish – which are things I’ve been told all throughout my asexual experience.”
Self-Care And Self Development
“I don’t trust my ability to say either yes or no in sexual situations, and this has extended to my life in general. I don’t feel comfortable in my ability to self-determinate.”
“The lack of authority, definition, and schooling of the concept of asexuality has made me very uncomfortable with what I think I am, and that uncertainty haunts me every waking moment.”
“I think it’s too late/too early to tell if I’m asexual, but the longer I hesitate, the worse my mental health and emotional wellbeing gets. I’m effectively stuck.”
“I see no benefit in coming out, or even identifying as asexual. There’s no positivity, role models, or supportive community for what I consider a big and scary part of my overall identity.”
“I think this was sexual abuse, but I’m wondering if I’m just being selfish and childish.”
“I think I was treated badly by my parents/friends/partner, but I’m wondering if I’m just being selfish and childish.”
“I want to believe that I’m deserving of equal freedom and human respect paid to other, not asexual people, but people tell me I’m being selfish and childish.”
“No one encourages this part of me. And that makes me feel forgotten and abandoned in general.”
Shut the fuck up about your petty beef with tumblr bloggers and youtubers and Archie comics or whatever. I literally do not care, I can’t care. I see these messages every goddamn day – this post was written and drafted a month ago, and I very easily compiled most of this bulletpoint list from scratch, just by eyeing what I see in the askbox and what comes across my dash.
‘Ace discourse’ anger is empty and so meaningless. This is what I see by being part of this one 17k follow asexual ask blog for maybe half a year. I am so Done with all the faux rage posts and all the false positivity about how it’s ok to NOT be ace and all the acephobia that falls perfectly in line with the gaslighting typical of acephobia-101 while also having the audacity to claim it not so.
This is what’s real and I want to bleed it into your goddamn eyes.
Reblogging this again, for obvious reasons
THANK YOU. I hate that his happens, I hate that I’ve lived through about half of it, and I really hate that anyone else had to live through any of it … but at least I’m not alone, and neither are they.
And let’s not pretend that most anti-ace posts reek of ableism and witch hunting.
A sizeable chunk of the autistic community is asexual. While the ace community is not majorly autistic, the ace community has the highest percentage of people who are autistic.
And let’s not pretend that most of these posts that show homophobic ace behavior have no name tied to them, no way to find if the person has apologized, how young they are, how long ago they said it, etc. Half the time you can’t even see if they tagged their post. It reeks of a witch hunt to find the few bad apples in a community to try and sabotage the reputation of the majority of the community. Lets not pretend that anti-sjws haven’t done the same thing for years.
So if you think the ‘ace discourse’ holds any merit, fuck you.
i love being an artist/creator. the ability humans have to create things is probably the Greatest Superpower like, look at this lil rooster i just drew for no reason
he’s gay, and he doesn’t get enough sleep, but lives a decent enough life. i relate to this rooster
look at this hippo i drew (also gay). she’s having a good day, but she has a secret: she suffers from severe depression. it’d give her a hug if i weren’t so afraid of hippos. sorry martha. i hope tomorrow is as good as today
now see this “sweet” little gran? she hides a dark secret as well. that secret is tax evasion. 55 YEARS of nonpayment of taxes. we’re not surprised, gran. just disappointed
drawing a rooster and making it gay for no reason, or drawing lesbian hippo having a good day, or a criminal old lady (probably also a lesbian – i know her cats are) may seem meaningless enough. but now the world is +1 gay rooster, +1 happy hippo, and +1 tax-evading grandma. without my doing, these specific things wouldn’t exist, but now they’re on your screen and you’re thinking about them and they have been registered into your brains as things that exist. they’re real now
it fucking pains me when people misjudge tony stark
because this is a guy who’s had to prove himself to everyone he’s ever met in his entire life
first there’s his dad who never thinks he’s good enough
then he’s at school and he’s this child prodigy who skips grades and corrects all the teachers and gets the highest marks without every even appearing to study (because everything is boring and far below his level but the damn school system has no idea how to handle a kid like him)
and imagine how the older kids looked at him, imagine being a 17 year old senior in high school and there comes this 14 year old
what do you do you fucking laugh, of course you laugh, because that kid’s gotta be lost, right?
except he isn’t and now he has to prove it to you, he’s always gotta prove it because two months later he’s already graduated way ahead of everyone else and is enrolling into college early
and everyone watches him go and whispers that the only reason he could possibly be there is because he’s dad’s rich and had to keep up his genius-guy-image
so tony has to prove himself again and he builds amazing, impossible things that no one could have even imagined, except his brain is full of imagination and he doesn’t fucking let the limitations the world tries to put upon him limit him in making what he imagines reality because he has to prove himself, he has to prove he’s just as good as everyone, that he’s worth the stark name
except his dad still doesn’t fucking love him and doesn‘t stay home for christmas and would rather spend an hour conversing with a liquor cabinet than with tony, his son
so tony builds a fucking AI robot arm at 17
and what does his dad do? he fucking dies on him.
and now tony is even more alone and the whole world is watching and waiting for him to fail because there’s no way this spoiled brat is going to be able to own a company
so he has to prove that too, except he’s a fucking mess so he puts on a cocky act and drowns his feelings in alcohol and hides his emotions in sex
and proves himself again by making fantastic intentions no one else could have made
and people hate him because who is this kid who thinks he’s all that
who is this man who thinks he can own the world
and sure he makes a few friends along the way but even to them he’s first gotta prove he’s not who everyone thinks he is, that there’s an actual person behind themask he puts on for the media
but it’s a mask he’s gotten used to wearing and hiding behind, even when he meets his goddamn childhood hero aka captain america aka the guy was the standard tony’s dad held him up to, that he never was able to live up to
and what does cap say?
he says tony isn’t even worth one tenth of guys he knows who have none of the things tony fought so hard to get his entire life
so tony’s gotta prove himself to him too, now, and he puts a fucking nuke into a black hole to do it, and he doesn’t even care if he dies because if he does, at least it’ll be while proving himself to the guy he’s tried to live up to for his entire childhood
people fucking underestimate tony because they judge him by the mask he’s had to put on to live
YES YOU NEED HIM THAT MUCH. YOU’RE NOT GOING TO FIND SOMEONE WHO CAN DO THE THINGS HE DOES ANYWHERE ELSE.
why do non-ADHD people find my conversations weird?
like, we’ll be talking about how both my iPod and my sister’s have cracked, and someone’ll mention computers, and then my thought-process will go something like this:
computer
laptop
most people get laptops in high school / college
i thought i’d have to buy my own
which usually happens in less than 30 seconds and then i’ll just say the last thought and the usual responses’ll come out:
“why did u just change the subject” (semi-rude)
“we weren’t talking about that” (rude)
“how did you get to that subject” (polite, as it was my mom)
which are all actual responses i have got from people who clearly aren’t ADHD.
whereas once i was arguing with my ADHD friend who plays euphonium about whether flute (my instrument) or euphonium is better and my thoughts went like this:
flute is better than euphonium
instruments
tumblr post about instruments
my viewpoint on the other instruments
which i began saying out loud while she was still talking. of course she saw no problem with either what is apparently viewed as “changing the subject” or me talking over her. because she’s ADHD and does the same things, even though, unlike me, she isn’t both hyperactive and inattentive and is just hyperactive.
tl;dr if you’re talking with an ADHD kid and they “change the subject,” instead of being rude, ask them how they got there politely, because that’s probably going to be interesting.
Destroy the concept that you can’t be fat and disabled.
Destroy it.
Destroy the stigma that surrounds people who are overweight and in wheelchairs.
Destroy the photos of people riding electric wheelchairs in Walmart with long, hateful, fatphobic captions about how they’re lazy and entitled.
And I’m looking at every single member of the disabled community because we (and I say we because even I’ve been guilty of this) are just as guilty of this as the abled community.
Which is really, really, really unfair.
Because disability advocacy is supposed to be about showing how we’re all equal despite the differences in our bodies (and/or minds).
And it’s shocking that so many people will talk about how beautiful people with disabilities are in one breath and then will use their next breath to fat-shame overweight people with disabilities.
I’ll put it bluntly: If your version of disability advocacy is screaming at an overweight person in a wheelchair because “they don’t really need that chair, they’re just fat” then you’re not a disability advocate. You’re just a bully.
There's a Mirror on the Wall 