Classism

callallhiswildworksyourown:

courtneymilan:

So…

I want to start this off by saying that I hate Wickham. I think he’s abusive and awful. I hate how he always fake-compliments Lydia by putting her down. I hate how he isolates her. I hate how he takes over her videos and makes them all about him, and how we see elements of vindictiveness in his videos.

I hate, especially, that he called Gigi “peach,” too—that he probably now knows that Gigi watches Lizzie’s videos, and wonders if she’s watching Lydia’s. It skeeves me out that maybe that message to Lizzie in Lydia’s video a while back was also a message to Gigi.

I want to punch Wickham in the face for what he’s doing and what he’s done, and I am not a violent person.

I also want to acknowledge that I heard enough to know that Wickham was emotionally manipulating Gigi. He played on her need to be needed, used the fact that he knows she’s kind of had a crush on him to get to her. He sought her out. He started a relationship with her under the guise of teaching her, and then made the moves—all when she was barely in college and he was substantially older. What he did to her was awful, and I do not want to imply otherwise.

But there’s one thing that really bugs me about that last episode: the fact that everyone in the narrative accepts that Darcy writing a check and Wickham taking it is proof that Wickham is in it for the money and that he never loved Gigi.

Don’t get me wrong; I think there’s enough additional evidence of Wickham’s character that under these circumstances, this is a fair conclusion. I absolutely do not want to defend Wickham here. But I want to defend some hypothetical innocent person who might be in Wickham’s position.

I really hate, hate, hate the implication that if you are in love with someone that you cannot have other priorities. That maybe, someone could have loved Gigi, but have still been willing to take the money.

Neither Gigi nor Darcy have ever been in a position where they needed money for anything, and they can’t imagine how money could ever be a barrier or a need. They’ve never contemplated doing something slightly stupid or slightly wrong for money. They’ve never had to.

Imagine Lizzie discovered she was in love with Darcy. Imagine someone said, “Lizzie, I will pay off all of Jane’s student loans and free her to work in her chosen career without having that hanging over her head, but you have to walk away from Darcy.” Imagine someone saying, “Jane, I will give your sisters lucrative jobs doing things they love, but you have to walk away from Bing.”

Those are hard choices—pitting one love against another. It doesn’t make you mercenary to love more than one person, to recognize that the lack of money causes problems.

You can do things for money that break your heart. Love pulls you in a lot of different directions, and I have a really, really hard time with people who have always had too much money judging someone for taking it. The Darcys don’t understand what the need for money feels like, how all consuming and scary it can be to feel constantly on the verge of falling. They don’t know what it’s like to be sick to your stomach for months on end because you and the people you love might have bad things happen to you simply because you don’t have money. They’ve never had to ask hard questions about whether to buy food or medicine, whether to break the law or see people you love suffer. Taking the money is not necessarily proof that there is no love.

This is all to say—I felt awful for Gigi throughout the story. I know Wickham’s a bad guy. I know he manipulated her. I am not going to give him a pass, not in the slightest.

But the punchline of this last episode—where everyone nodded and judged him for taking a check, and assumed that THAT was the proof of his being a dickbag (instead of relying on the better proof we had—his emotional manipulation of her)—that rubbed me the wrong way.

Co-signed hardcore. Wickham is scum, but coding taking money as evil is… yeah, problematic, especially because I can say with absolute certainty that I’d take financial security over romance in a hot second.

I think one important thing is that… it seems to me that Wickham is a financial leech. Yeah, he probably chose Gigi as a mark in part to get back at Darcy, but also because her life is paid for, so staying close to her means his life is paid for too.

With Lydia, I’m assuming that Wickham is gunning for another check, because he knows that the Bennet’s don’t have money. In a way, when Darcy gave George that original check, he fucked up hardcore because now he has an easy way to get rid of George and George knows that is a tactic for him.

That’s what makes Wickham morally reprehensible, that he walks into relationships looking to use them for support (Gigi said that he needed the money when he offered to coach her).

tl;dr: The Lizzie Bennet Diaries has some serious class issues, and I wish I knew how aware the creators were of that. Thankfully there seems to be some self-awareness going on.

lucyzephyr:

commanderbishoujo:

lightspeedsound:

commanderbishoujo:

crustified:

legitimatehypnotist:

post-colonial:

basically anyone who really shames people for buying their kids shoes or for buying themselves a manicure while poor doesnt understand poverty

poor people often have a lot of disposable income, more than you think, cause they live on cash

they often do not have any means of transforming that cash into assets or into longterm wealth

so yes i had a lot of toys and nice things as a poor kid because you can buy toys at the dollar store too

and like you can pay a lady 10 dollars in cash to do your nails professionally

but you really cannot scrimp, at least not anymore (maybe decades ago you could) to buy yourself a house or to invest in stocks or other things that guarantee financial protection

poor people are liquid- thats why they may have material goods including nice cell phones but they broke ass will always be broke 

hell, even banks and financiers EXPLOIT the liquidity of poor people; cash advance places in the hood and the proven empirical facts that cash deposits from banks in low-income neighborhood go towards major investments and are used as liquid assets by big businesses

keeping poor people in cash and banks in poor neighborhoods are major transfers of wealth in this economy

so please spare me your policing of some lady who decided to get some shoes

Amen.

But I still don’t understand it, really, because you can put your money in a bank right? Open a savings account? I mean, I’m not going to make anyone feel bad about what they spend their money on, seriously, I feel that that’s completely your own business, but I don’t really understand the point you’re trying to make. Yes, you might only have cash, but that cash can be deposited into a bank account, right?

oh my god. this is the most naive clueless bullshit I have read in a long time.

do you understand how banks actually work? that you can’t just waltz into any old bank and just open an account? that you need multiple forms of ID and credit checks that poor folks that stay living on cash can’t pass (or else they wouldn’t be living on cash)?

do you understand that regular ass savings accounts are virtually worthless in terms of actually saving any money, and that the pittance you earn in interest is typically wiped out or even negated by what I’m about to talk about below?

do you understand that the vast majority of banks with “free checking” are actually free with an asterisk, meaning that they charge fees if your balance is ever below a certain amount that is astronomical for the average poor person in the hood to maintain (and those institutions that don’t typically require more stringent credit checks)

do you understand that the way banks structure their fees disproportionately hammers lower income people (i worked for a bank, okay? I know how this works). getting just 1 overdraft can lead to a vicious cycle of fees for folks who live paycheck to paycheck, as poor folks do

and you can end up owing them money even after they close your account

which they can then sue you for

and leave your credit even worse than it was when you started, if you can’t pay and they levy a judgment on you

and you are essentially blacklisted from having an account anywhere else until you can get it cleared up

…

Do you even know the sheer amount of information you need to provide to a bank?

Like social security number, ID, rent checks, everything?

Do you honestly think a person without a stable house could be able to go to the bank and be like “sometimes my housing situation is up in the air, let me put my money in an account here, and you can give me interest on it”?

Fucking really?

Also it’s not OP was saying “being poor just means we’re rolling in liquid cash”

Jesus Christ, way to forget what “poor” means 

it means that you don’t have enough assets to save anything

It means that you have your pay check, you cash it, and then you live off of it for the month

I’m not saying every single poor person in the world is starving, because obviously there are different strata of being poor

But I’m saying that there are a shitton of people who end up wanting to give their kids something nice (and yes, dollar store toys are a godsend for many parents, OP, thank you for saying so, seriously, it’s not like these kids are walking around with a wii or anything, they’re walking around with crayons and coloring books and shit).  But seriously if you think you can waltz into a bank with that $10 you managed to miraculously save that month that’s extra and say “hey, can I open this account or what?” You are seriously deluded.

BANK ACCOUNTS HAVE A MINIMUM AMOUNT NEEDED TO OPEN AN ACCOUNT. And the more interest you want, the more you’re going to have to invest in the account. And the higher the interest rate, the higher the minimum balance you have to maintain in the account. There’s a bajillion fees and regulations and personal background checks you have to go through, just to open the account, and there are a million more you have to go through to MAINTAIN the account. And quite frankly, it’s not even worth if you need money immediately, for immediate needs.

Being able to save money is a privilege. And a lot of times, only the rich can afford to be thrifty. 

Like all those things that rich people, or even upper middle class people, do to save money? Like creating a college fund for your kid, or investing in stocks, or even going to sam’s club, or getting on an affordable cell phone plan? Yeah. That shit costs money EVERY MONTH. You add up all those payments, on top of food and gas and electric and water bills and rent, you’re seriously talking a shitton of extra money that PEOPLE JUST DO NOT HAVE.

What the fuck is this shit. Like seriously, “You can just put it in an account”?

God, what privileged bullshit is that?

Reminds me of in high school when bitches on my hockey team didn’t know how to write a personal check by themselves because mommy and daddy had always just given them a credit  card, or written the check for them. 

JFC I can’t even right now. I can’t even. 

reblogging again for more bomb ass commentary.

Doing the same. Bank accounts aren’t so fucking easy. I also have serious problems writing checks, because I’ve never had enough money to have a bank account. Minimum limits: they fucking exist.