Guest post: Just trying not to fall into the fire

Originally a comment by Artymorty on Soz nomination canceled.

Lumping race and religion/”faith” together is exactly the kind of thing that causes problems for women within Muslim families who disagree with the conservative tenets of the faith, who need support, and who are too-often ignored by UK “progressives” who are far too concerned about “Islamophobia” to listen too closely to the issues raised by liberal Muslims and Brits with Pakistani/Indian heritage.

Subsuming women’s rights entirely into the category “gender” is such blatant sexist bullshit, it’s clear these “awards” are a joke.

And indeed, of course class isn’t mentioned. I’m sure these are comfortably well-off young people, the kind of people I’ve had to work and live alongside my whole adult life: who like to think they count as working-class because they take low-paying jobs in the city and live in the city, but they still call their parents’ house in the suburbs “home” and still have a bedroom to go “home” to for the holidays, who have no idea the constant anxiety, the fear that wakes you up in the middle of the night in sweats, of living paycheque to paycheque with absolutely no safety net, no parents or relatives to fall back on. People who don’t understand that your “place” in the city isn’t your fun-times adventure-pad; it’s your real home — the only shelter you’ve got, and if you lose it, the consequences are far more than an awkward phone call to Mum and Dad: it’s selling your mattress for $40, stuffing as many clothes you can into a duffel bag and registering at a bedbug-infested shelter. A lot of young people (and not-so-young people too) have a hard time understanding that for many of us it feels like every day we’re clinging by our nails to the ridge of a volcano’s caldera, just trying not to fall into the fire.

And frankly I’m not one to talk, because I don’t have dependents. Even stuffing a duffel bag and moving into a shelter for a while isn’t so bad compared to what impoverished parents have to go through to support their kids.

I wonder if the COVID crisis will bring class, income inequality and the social safety-net back to the forefront of the left’s priorities, where frankly it has always belonged…

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