remembering that time I explained on Twitter that Jews are 0.2% of the world’s population and control like 1.2% of its wealth
while Christians are 30-something percent of the world’s population and control 55% of its wealth
so, like, there IS a minority of the world’s population controlling the majority of its wealth
Christians.
and of course a bunch of utter walnuts were like “SEE??? this proves that Jews ARE disproportionately wealthy!!!”
which, like, sure
sure
we have $1.20 to Christians’ $55
but sure, individually we average out to having a bit more pocket change than the world’s average
a couple of things, though:
-those are AVERAGES—it doesn’t mean that every Jew you meet is wealthy, especially because…
-we are such a small population that the existence of *one Jewish billionaire* would skew the average, learn what an average is ffs, if there are 10 of us and 1 is a billionaire and the rest of us have $0 dollars, on average we each have $100,000,000 but in reality 9 of us still have $0 dollars
-y’all killed off a LOT of our poor people less than a century ago which also tends to skew the average
The minority group (in the sense of being less than half the population; they’re still the largest religion) controlling the majority of the world’s wealth is Christians. Sorry about your favorite conspiracy theory.
y’all killed off a LOT of our poor people less than a century ago which also tends to skew the average
i want to print that out and staple it to ppl’s foreheads. a lot of the jews who fled extreme violence, genocide, and ethnic cleansing were only able to do so because they had the funds. those who couldn’t afford to leave were killed. and those who were barely able to scrape by enough to escape usually were forced into assimilation wherever they immigrated because poverty doesn’t give you much of a choice.
“Think of the two major possibilities here: Either the studios owe untold millions to their talents and paying it out will decimate their stock prices, or they owe so little because there really is no money in streaming and the bubble of their entire 21st century business model will burst in spectacular fashion. And make no mistake: this is a bubble. This is the inevitable climax of a stockholder-driven hunger for infinite growth, despite the fact that, by design, such a thing cannot and should not exist. The infection of Wall Street has overwhelmed the entertainment industry beyond repair, leading to cultural vandals like David Zaslav to be appointed with the callous duty of strip-mining decades’ of artistic beauty for pennies of tax write-offs. The past and future are frivolous in comparison to the short-term demands that the line keep going up.”
Last year I wrote about what happened at Pride when a couple of kids didn’t understand why us older folx were so bitter about Reagan.
This year, I have something a little softer.
Someone who looked a little older than me came up to the booth wearing a pink t-shirt proclaiming him one of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, San Francisco chapter. As I was ringing him up, I asked if he’d been involved for a while.
“Yes,” he said, “for a bit,” in that way us middle-aged people do when we’re sort of wincing and feeling old.
“Okay, well,” I said, sitting at my register in my queer booth full of queer clothes and patches and pins, topless in public for the first time. (I had pasties on for my own comfort bc I was working, but I live in the city of the Naked Bike Ride, and I took full advantage). My baby brother and both of my partners ran around behind me, my brother wearing a loose tank top that makes his scars visible.
“I need to tell you that you all helped keep me alive.”
He blinked at me as I continued, “I was a kid in high school in the early 90s. I lived in the middle of nowhere in Pennsylvania, and what you all were doing was so loud and so out there that even I heard about your work. It was one of the things that kept me alive. So thank you, and please thank the rest of the Sisters.”
I heard about them through people in my parents’ church complaining about them, and then I sought more information through the beginning of the internet, through newspapers, through anything I could find. I found the cover of Newsweek that one of the Sisters was on. I read about their “exorcism” of fundamentalist preachers whose books sat on the shelf in my parents’ basement and probably still do. I saw how loud and colorful and unapologetically queer they were.
The knowledge that someone was out there, so full of defiant joy, refusing the shame that people kept trying to put on them? Oh, that kept me alive. I saw them, and I knew I could make it through. I wrapped my hands around that knowledge, and I held on so tight.
It took me a long time - a long, long time - to unwind most of it for myself and get to the point where my fat butch ass was sitting bare-chested in the July breeze, looking up at him as he held out his arms and said “you’re actually giving me chills.” I answered, “I mean every word. You helped keep me alive. So thank you.”
I never know what to say when people come up to me in public and tell me that I helped them or changed their life in some way. I appreciate it, and I genuinely love the people who apologized for “fanpersoning” at me last weekend, I just never know what to say. I’m incredibly grateful that the Sister I spoke to was incredibly gracious, saying “usually we give blessings, but I feel like you blessed me.” Another member of the party let me pet their tiny dog, who was not very interested in me, and that’s okay. It was an overwhelming day. Then, they moved on.
Me? I’m still sitting with the fact that I looked last weekend into the faces of people who didn’t know they were holding my head above water, and that I got to tell them the work they do matters. It’s a rare thing to get to tell someone, “You saved me,” and I’m treasuring it.
Last weekend, I wore my new battle vest with nothing underneath it, unless it was too hot, and then I just sat in my chair, chatting and ringing ppl out with my skin free to the air. I decided last year that top surgery isn’t for me, but that also I’m going to love this body unapologetically, and it’s no less a transmasculine body because the soft new dark hair on my belly isn’t accompanied by pink scars along my ribs.
I didn’t get here on my own. I got here because someone else cut through the undergrowth ahead of me so I could take another step forward. Here I am, decades later, still taking step after step, one at a time, and trying to lay paving stones behind me.
Last weekend was another step along that way, another step through unwinding the fear and shame and sadness that my parents and their church built into me. Another step out of hating myself for hiding parts of myself for so long, for acting out in other ways to distract people from my queerness, for feeling so much guilt when other people tell me I’m brave, because I know how much of myself I hid for how long because I was a coward, because I was afraid.
any time i hear the insufferable transphobic athlete arguments i think of that one time in middle school when my boys lacrosse team did a full-contact scrimmage against the girls team (who typically play with limited contact) and i, a six-foot, 180lb defender, got utterly laid-out by this 5-foot-nothing girl experiencing the newly-unleashed animosity accompanied by violent sport and as i looked up at my assailant from flat on my back i experienced a brief bout of heterosexuality and fell wildly in love and then had to be taken to the ER because i had a concussion
“from flat on my back i experienced a brief bout of heterosexuality” took me out
what do I have to do to go to events where people are dressed nicely and there are plates of free cheese cubes
Go to the inaugurations of littlely known artists’ exhibitions.
We are always begging for people to attend, there actually is the “hack” to invite your whole family but tell them to pretend they don’t know you. People with money are more willing to buy your work if they think many people likes it, so your mere presence eating our cheese and canapes will be a great helps. Please bring whoever you want too.
Don’t mind if I do!
I will dress like an eccentric weirdo if that helps.
one time a pal of my pals was having a tough time selling their work in an art exhibit and called us up on the last day, ‘us’ being about 8 students who were Very hungry and also bored. We put on the nicest/artsiest clothes we had available (one dude had a legit fancy suit and put on some shades which were Bright Pink he looked like a movie star I swear) and rolled up to the show in pairs, separately. Fine Art Pal has some nice paintings! but nobody is really paying attention to them, so after getting some fancy cheese cubes in a manner that did not betray that we were actually a ravenous pack of starving students we casually wander around the show and then, fairly individually, drift to a stop by their work. Some of us even walked away, then came back a bit later ‘captivated’ by the art (it was actually really nice but recall we were all poor as shit and this was a help hustle). Our group’s interest naturally caught other folks, and eventually there was a small clump of about 15 people musing over this art, and within ten minutes the biggest piece had been snatched up by a shrewd investor. by the end of the exhibit every single piece was sold. It helped pay off the artist’s student debt and on that success they got into another exhibit! They’ve been doing well ever since.
So yes, please attend new artist shows, you get free cheese, get to look at nice art, and you can really help out people who deserve more attention.
propose to him with the worst fucking ring you can possibly get your hands on. like not a half-assed, “oh you won’t like anything I get anyway,” passive-aggression ring, that is not the play, you need to do your research and take some interest in the things that matter to your enemy future husband and really learn about like, the gemstone cuts or whatever, and then you need to get him the most eye-catching ring you can find that would also be completely offensive to his overdeveloped sensibilities. He’s putting in all this effort to bribe the cat to bite you, it’s the least you could do to step it up in response.
So that anon came back with an adorable proposal story, but I fucking love this idea and need it to make it into someone’s fanfic or something
ALT
