Random life stories from yours truly

Classism

At first glance, and first thought, I'd be one of the last people to be discriminated against.

I'm cis, white, and live in a suburban neighborhood.

The stuff that I could get discriminated against for, but never have been (yet) is my Jewish ancestry, bisexuality, sex, and tom-boyish style.

However, despite living in a pretty decent neighborhood, I have fallen victim numerous times to one form of discrimination that doesn't nearly get talked about as much as it should.

Classism.

Classism- by Google Dictionary's definition- is: noun "prejudice against or in favor of people belonging to a particular social class."

Despite living in a rich neighborhood, and going to a rich public school, I am literally living at the edge of the neighborhood, and am a broken leg away from being homeless. Numerous people at my school have actually failed to understand just how un-wealthy I am. Granted, I'm not poor, but I'm definitely not living comfortably either. The house is falling apart, our stove recently died, our water tank is who-knows-how-old, and we have to make sure we're super careful with the electricity because we can't afford to have the wiring redone.

A key example of my classism encounter was a few months ago on Instagram.

I wish I had pointed this out to her then, and I am sure there is a large chance she's reading this.

One night, I was doom-scrolling Insta, when I saw one of those "if your friend doesn't respond to this in 7 seconds, they have to do blah-blah-blah" reels. Nobody else was online except for this one girl, who for the sake of consistency, we'll call Maurya. She was a mutual friend in eight grade, so my loyal ass thought it'd be okay to send her a reel that associated "friend" with the person you're sending it to.

I'm going to save the full conversation for another day, but long convo short:

She got pissed at me for indirectly calling her my friend, kept on passive-aggressively insulting me- basically she was the sequel of the whole situation with Ang. Just unnecessarily nasty.

At some point I try explaining to her that I have mental health problems in an attempt to make her be a bit more conscious of her words, and how what she was saying was effecting me.

Now, I'm not really going back and forth on that chat, so this is just how I remember it going. Take this quoting with a grain of salt.

"Why don't you just go to therapy?" she said.

"My mom and I can't afford it."

"What, so you don't have insurance?"

"Nope. No insurance."

"That's a lie. Everyone can afford insurance." She might as well have said.

"I'm not lying. I can't afford therapy."

"Anyone can afford therapy."

"No, we can't."

"So you're saying you can't afford a basic human necessity?"

"Yes."

"Liar."

She kept on going on about how I can afford therapy, when I- in fact- can not.

On top of this, she is one of those people that accuses me of being racist for disliking someone that's been rude or mean to me that just so happens to be dark-skinned. She's also the type of person who looks at me as if my birth is the cause of all problems in the world. By that logic, I have every right to call her classist.