I dont care what UK says, I dont care what you think is safe, I will never put my government id on an online platform.

the popularity of far-right and right-wing parties is fueled by the class division and billionaires claiming they work for the working people. the resurgence of racism, xenophobia, transphobia, homophobia, ableism etc. is also to do with classism. punching down because the government doesn't care about ANY of us and the ultra-rich use that to turn attention away from them: it's class division.

south london boroughs (think croydon, sutton) are considered 'shitholes' because they're full of the disadvantaged working class, where the crime rates are higher, the houses are cheaper, the council tax is higher because the problems that the working class face aren't solved by shelving it and avoiding the area, they're solved by investing time and energy into the problems in our communities (like kids being groomed into gangs because they don't have anyone to help them out of it, security chasing loiterers—kids!— out of shopping centres because all the youth centres have been underfunded for years). this happens all across the country, in major cities that get treated as dangerous shitholes because they are inhabited by the disadvantaged.

and not only that

our accents are so fucking intertwined with class, not only do they locate you on the island but they also tell others what class you are from. we see people switching between their normal accent and a more 'refined' posh accent because they get treated differently depending on which they use. i have about three different accents i use, my normal, slightly more refined, and then the toned down RP. all of which i will use in different situations and i have done so since i was very little. growing up on a council estate taught me that people treat you like shite on the bottom of their shoes if they even perceive you as council estate trash, but if you can mask that and sound less working class, they actually look at you with more respect. people on the streets, in schools, in the workplace, all fall into this trap. this class division is fucking everywhere.

A week in stasis, as the world moves at the pace it was meant to be.

Summer come early. Humid and sweaty, and I think of the colonizers,

Who smugly wore their clothes multilayered

And their fainting couches threadbare.

But I have food and paper and can bide my time

And I fix the chicken coop, a little each day, as the earth grows feverish

But I am starting to get used to it,

And though tomorrow I will complain about the heat,

About the sickness,

A part of me still feels hope for an endless summer,

I live in a very blue state.

I received a field trip to a health center that taught me what a period was when I was in 5th grade.

I received a sex-ed unit in health class when I was a freshman. It was abstinence only. My teacher taught us about every single STD and STI in the book, never discussed any form of birth control, and gave us a packet about teen pregnancies in Canada from 2003. It was the United States in 2017. He promoted waiting until marriage or else our lives would be ruined, that no man would want us, that our “bond” with our spouse wouldn’t be as strong.