Sometimes I get really fucking tired of living in a society that was clearly built for people who are not me. Being a minority fucking sucks. Even if you aren't the kind that are actively discriminated against, like a racial minority, consistently fitting into the 10% makes things hard. And sometimes I feel like if I was a racial minority, at least I'd have the chance of some solidarity. :/
But no, the simple social and economic force of "for the greater good/profit, we must dedicate 100% of our efforts to 90% of the population" fucking sucks when you rarely fall within that 90% (And there a lot of ways I don't). Regardless, the following bit might seem like a nitpicky thing to go off about, a minor issue, and maybe it is. But all the same...
The current trigger for thinking about this? Shoes! After several dozen years of pressure, a company has finally released a pair of climbing shoes that don't cause severe pain and increase the chance of injury for the 10% of the population to which I belong. And while that makes me happy, it still makes me sad too, that it should make me happy. Thanks to cultural pressures, 80% of foot problems in the US occur within my 10% of the population. We NEED to wear shoes, but the only shoes provided in most places are shoes that are guaranteed to cause structural damage to our feet or are, at best, a 'compromise' that doesn't do much of anyone any favours. I don't even like mentioning it, because medically it's termed a "condition", or a "syndrome", or a "disorder". Because clearly anything that occurs in less than 10% of the population, and is negatively impacted by the fact that it doesn't properly fit into "normal" society, is a disorder and a disease, right? For some reason, I doubt there's going to be a movement to reclaim Morton's toe the way there was for homosexuality. Not to say the prejudice against homosexuality wasn't a lot worse, but that's sort of the issue, isn't it? Part of what saddens me is that I don't even feel like I have the right to complain, because the issues are so minor in comparison. But its still real. It's the same /sort/ of problem, and it's disappointing to see us carving out "exceptions" for things while still using the broken system that created the problem as our foundation. Neither of them should EVER have been classified as a disorder - but apparently the only qualification for something to be a disorder is that it doesn't affect "normal" people. Divergence is a disease that needs to be treated in modern society - unless, like the Greeks, we've decided the divergence is the ideal. (Unfortunately, in our society, I don't have any of THOSE divergences)
But anyway, one thing has lead to another, and I've moved on from shoes to think about things more generally. Because it feels like I'm going through this pretty much everywhere, that things that are so trivial and simple for other people are trivial and simple because those things, the way they were shaped and constructed and designed, were done so with those people in mind! 99.99% of the attention and effort goes towards making things easier for 90% of the population - often at the expense of the other 10%. I feel like the way our society works simply isn't meant for "people like me". And I don't even have the option of conforming, because like with the foot thing, most of it is stuff I can't realistically change.
I was going to say more, go a bit further, but I realized I don't actually want to talk about the more serious shit that my mind went to after that, so I'll stop here.
Author
Topic: Things that made you sad today thread. (Read 9704786 times)