There is someone in my life whom i can really only describe as the most classist liberal i’ve ever met.  Of course social mobility upward is the only right and proper thing for someone born poor, right??

Yet i was somehow still legitimately shocked when, during a discussion of language change¹, this person quipped that the problem was probably “too many people who live in trailers”.

Oh, you didn’t….

Trailer trash manifesto, part 1:  You do not have the right to determine that another human being is trash.

Trailer trash manifesto, part 2:  You don’t get to assign a sense of stupidity to anyone based solely upon the fact that they — either by choice or necessity — live in inexpensive housing.

I’m betting that the person who said this to my face had never actually met anyone who’d ever lived in a trailer.  How can someone possibly know anything about someone else without ever meeting them??

Correction: This person didn’t realize they knew someone who’d lived in a trailer — didn’t realize they were actually making this assertion to someone who had, in fact, grown up in a double-wide modular home².

To a certain extent this person has a point about trailer trash and language change.  Because i grew up in a modular home, and i am all for language evolution/change.  I even start my sentences with “because”!  And also “and”!!  Anyway, i’m not sure how a person can be against language evolution — being against it has never stopped it in the past.

I don’t even know how to end this rant, because it still just makes me so mad.  In conclusion, i’ll just leave you with “Jersey Shore” done in the style of Oscar Wilde start with part 1³.

1. It’s a natural evolutionary process — GET USED TO IT. [↩]
2. Which, for those of you who aren’t aware of the fine gradations of pre-fabricated homes, is basically a trailer that’s just a little larger and has no wheels. [↩]
3. Tho’ i do suspect these clips amuse me for reasons that are the opposite of why Playbill thought the concept would be amusing. [↩]

The panel that sparked my rage over class discussions at Wiscon (or, if you’re kinder, like raanve, “the panel that sparked a revolution”) was a panel i didn’t even attend.  How could i be enraged by something if i wasn’t even in the room for it?  Well….

Trailer Trash and Unrighteous Rebels:Human Beings in Space
[track: Writing SF&F: The Craft]

Many SF writers see the world in black and white: good guys, bad guys, soldiers and aristocrats and colony farmers and street scum, both good and bad. Where are the trailer trash, the Darwin Awards candidates, the guys who join the Good Rebellion for the loot or the fun of setting things on fire? Which authors get it right — Pratchett, Hambly, Cherryh — and how can we add this dimension to our own writing without shallow stereotyping?

M: Nonie B. Rider, Catherine Lundoff, Mary H. Rosenblum, Mark William Tiedemann, Janine Ellen Young

Still can’t see my rage?  Allow me to enlighten you on 2 points.

1)  We are not just another “dimension” to add to your writing. Those of us who grew up in trailers, in “modular homes,” under the poverty line.  We are people.  And when you talk about us, you better damned well talk about us with respect, as if we are people — as if we are people who matter, just like you.  You want to avoid “shallow stereotyping”??  (Which, incidentally, you didn’t even in the panel description — “trailer trash”? “Darwin awards candidates”??  Good grief.)  How about you try talking to us instead of just about us.  How ’bout you try to actually get to know us, instead of making assumptions.

2)  Because if you think i’m “trash,” you can just go fuck yourself. Put your hipster classism the same place you put your hipster racism, and i guarantee the sun does not shine there.

It’s especially a shame that this panel was such a disaster because it overshadows another class panel at the very same Wiscon (#30, 2006) that wasn’t a disaster:

Myth of Class Mobility?
[track: Politics, Religion, and Money]

Research indicates economic mobility decreased in the United States between the 1970s and 1990s, and that France, Canada, and Denmark have more mobility than the United States.  Software programming used to be a clear career choice for people looking to move into the middle or upper-middle class.  But in an era of outsourcing and offshoring, is it anymore?

M: Avedon Carol, Matthew H. Austern, Samuel R. Delany, David D. Levine, Victor Jason Raymond

The transcript at the FeministSF wiki (linked to in the panel’s title above) is worth a read.  More thoughtful discussion like this, please!!  Geez, is the secret to have Chip Delany and Victor Raymond on all these panels?  Swear i’m tempted to collect all the names of everyone who’s ever positively contributed to a thoughtful class discussion like this panel and call it a “speakers bureau” so programmers at other cons know who to put on class panels.

Because you have no right to judge that another human is trash.