Disputing Reality

 

I'm active on a Quora group about homelessness, and one of the most frequent and maddening statements I find myself arguing against on there is "Most homeless people choose to be homeless. It's a lifestyle thing." I tell these people they're wrong. Most people who are homeless are so because they don't have enough money for housing. The reason I fight back is because it seems they're denying that involuntary poverty even exists, and my rage trigger is people contradicting empirical reality.

"You can't see me!"

 

It's like that old Judge Judy line, "Don't piss on my shoes and tell me it's raining." So many things coming from identetarians that I object to, and that cause other progressives to tag me as a conservative, are about this. Like when a black, multimillionaire politician says that they're oppressed and that a white welfare recipient living in a trailer park is oppressing them and has greater privilege. 

Patriarchy

 

Or when a criminal literally attempts to murder a police officer, they fight, the assailant loses, and then people say, "The police killed him for no reason but being black." 

 

"You're saying I did what now?"

 Or when a guy puts on a dress and people say, "He's an actual, biological woman now, he's always been a woman from the day he was born, and if you don't believe that, you're a bigot." There's this creepily Orwellian formula to it: 1) Make a false assertion that can be easily disproved, 2) Aggressively demand that others accept your assertion as reality, 3) Punish and ostracize anyone who refuses to accept it. 

 

"Right?"

 

It's like the Wokester version of the Spanish Inquisition. One of the big things the Inquisitors went after people for was blasphemy, and one of the articles of faith they insisted on was the transubstantiation of the Eucharist. For those who aren't theology geeks, that's the belief that the bread used in a Catholic mass to represent the body of Jesus during the sacrament of Communion (where they ritually re-enact the last meal Jesus had with his followers before his execution) literally, physically BECOMES the actual flesh of Jesus during the ritual, as opposed to just being a piece of bread that symbolizes his body. Another one was that they required everybody to believe that Mary was actually a virgin. 

 

 

Oh, hey, we were just talking about you.

 

 

These are pretty far-out things to expect a person who's not schizophrenic to believe, yet the Inquisitors were so insistent about it that they'd actually torture and kill anyone they didn't feel was sufficiently enthusiastic in the expression of their belief in these things. 

"This is your last chance--tell me I'm a pretty, blue pony and say it like you mean it!"

 

That's my top pet peeve. When a person (or worse, multiple people) who are completely unhinged from reality bully others into playing along with their self-serving delusions, I can't just ignore it. I paid attention to "The Emperor's New Clothes." You don't pretend to believe in bullshit just because powerful people insist on it.

So anyway...

LGBT folks are way overrepresented among the homeless. The explanation has always been that angry parents kick out their queer teenagers, leaving them homeless. I always accepted this narrative. I felt bad for the kids and felt resentment towards their parents.

But I'm seeing conversations among trans people on Twitter and there's this running theme of "My mom kept a picture of me from when I was a kid" or "My grandma deadnamed me" and so on--basically "My family regarded me as being the same person they've known my whole life"--followed by "...so I cut off my whole phobic family and haven't talked to any of them in years." This is met with much cheering and encouragement, and general disparagement of anyone who won't play along with their delusions.

I see a LOT of that. I've yet to run across a single account of "my parents kicked me out for not being what they wanted." I'm not saying that has never happened. I'm saying that, at least from what I'm seeing, the voluntary runaways vastly outnumber the ones who were put out of their parents' home onto the street against their will.

 

"Misery loves company. If you can't make peace with your own family, encourage other people to abandon theirs."

 

I recognize that my perception may be a bit skewed because of the possibility that the kids who are homeless might have less access to the internet. Maybe there's some hidden economic dynamic where the people who cut themselves off from their families voluntarily are more likely to have internet access, while the ones that were kicked out are less likely to. I'm not saying I think that's true or that I've seen any evidence of it--I'm just leaving the door open to the possibility of something I could be overlooking.

But it doesn't look that way. It seriously looks like they're the ones being jerks and making ultimatums, and then crying that they've been victimized when they haven't been. As I've told right-wingers for years, "No, not getting to force people to do what you say isn't a violation of your rights."

On one of these discussions, I saw trans people complaining about not being able to change their birth certificate in some states. Why on Earth would you change a birth certificate? The whole point of it is to make a permanent record of facts that actually happened. You were born in a certain place. Your parents were particular people. You were born at a definite time and date. In most cases, you were born with a clearly identifiable sex. None of these things change over time. Even if you get adopted, it doesn't change your genetics. History isn't to be erased and rewritten because we didn't like how it went. I'm 5'9". I can't just demand that the Bureau of Motor Vehicles change my driver's license to say I'm 6'4". I can't become a citizen of Canada just by changing my birth certificate to say that I was born in Ottawa. I'm 49 years old. I can't just have my vital records changed to say I'm 19. It doesn't matter how intensely I feel like a tall, young Canadian. I'm not one, and lying about it on official records is--and should be--a crime. 

" I identify as being 21. Gotta problem with that?"

So now I've got to reevaluate my position on whether most homelessness is really involuntary. I need actual data so I have numbers to crunch. Are most homeless people just really, really poor, or were they all kids who ran away from home because Grandpa called them by their birth name?