As a kid, when your parents are poor, you’re poor. If they don’t have money, that means none of you have money. But if someone’s parents are rich, that doesn’t necessarily mean the kid is. Sometimes rich peoples’ kids aren’t rich kids, they’re just some rich freak’s exotic pets that can talk but aren’t allowed to.
That’s… not how class works
ALT
OK, so- my partner was adopted by a rich woman when he was a baby. She’s from a prominent family, practically royalty where we’re from. She certainly had the means to send him to fancy private school, give him good food, nice clothes/toys, premium healthcare… she chose not to. According to her he was lucky to be “adopted out of poverty” at all and should have been content with what she deigned to give him. And she reminded him of this constantly, all through his childhood.
She dangled the promise of uni in exchange for good behavior and good grades- with terms and conditions, of course. And filling her laundry list of demands was something like pulling teeth whilst jumping through hoops. In the end, did he get to go to uni? Of course not. (And certainly being queer/trans on top of it all did not help things whatsoever).
He cut her off after high school, and when I met him a year ago he had been working as (the equivalent of) an UberEats driver for a living for the last few years, including through the pandemic. (Sixteen hours a day for the equivalent of $6 (six) USD, not including the gas for his shitty rundown scooter; caught COVID twice, suffers from chronic fatigue to this day).
And to this day he still has to be selective about which of our ~leftist anarcho-commie~ friends he divulges this part of his background to- cos all they hear is “raised rich” and then suddenly he’s not One of Them because “well teeeeechncially :^) you’re from the oppressing class…”. Like…. shit, man!
Social rules don’t mean shit when it comes to abusive parents. Even rich ones.
Probably especially rich ones.
people are totally on board with the concept of “sufficiently rich people are above the law, and this is bad” but refuse to connect that to the concept of “this also includes laws that protect children from abuse and exploitation”
like we understand “the ruling classes get and maintain their wealth through cruel exploitation of those less powerful” and we can’t wrap our heads around “a lifetime of this cruel and merciless behavior being valorized by your peers probably doesn’t predispose you to suddenly changing gears once you have a helplessly dependent child that’s totally under your control.”
like yeah the rich are our enemies in this ongoing class war, absolutely, it’s an Us or Them situation to save the planet. but if you don’t give a shit about saving the enemy’s children too, i don’t think very highly of your motivation or your methods.
oh, here’s a relevant example I saw just the other day:
no matter how terrible my day is. i can always end my day in bed imagining fictional characters making out sloppy style and fucking raw. and that’s beautiful. there’s some good in this world mister frodo and it’s worth fighting for
rabbits know and resent their place on the food chain
mice and rats also know they’re prey animals, they just have such joy of living that it cancels out. guinea pigs have no concept of death but understand contextless fear. hamsters however do know the food chain, but they also know that attachment to the earth is the root of suffering and they wisely deny the faults of the ego
ALT
