There are some significant barriers that people living in poverty face when it comes to managing their finances. However, these may not always be obvious, so let’s talk about them. Let’s consider what it might look like to be living in poverty here in British Columbia, Canada, where I live. Provincial income assistance payments, including …
A fellow blogger wrote a while back about social media claims that a film was whitewashing. It reminded me of a conversation about on-screen representation of marginalized groups that I’d had with someone not long before that, and I thought I’d write about it. Representation issues Let’s begin with the conversation from a while back. …
Marginalized Groups and On-Screen Representation Read More »
I don’t have the economics background to speak to the feasibility of universal basic income, so I won’t try; however, I did want to explore the potential benefits for people with mental illness. What universal basic income is While various implementations have been proposed, at its core, universal basic income (UBI) has several basic characteristics. …
Benefits of Universal Basic Income for People with Mental Illness Read More »
Lately, white privilege has been a hot topic. The people I’ve come across who take a stance against the idea of white privilege seem to have in common the line of thinking that they haven’t been handed anything, so how can they have social privilege? Wikipedia describes social privilege as: “a special, unearned advantage or …
Social Privileges as a Counterpoint to Social Burdens Read More »
Through our shared humanity, all lives matter. So why is it important to say Black lives matter? When lives don’t matter All lives should matter equally. That is the ideal, and probably most of us would agree that it’s the “right” thing. Unfortunately, though, in practice, not all lives are given equal value. An obvious …
With all the craziness going on in the world, elections have been on a lot of people’s minds lately. The other day I started watching Chelsea Handler’s new documentary special on Netflix called Hello, Privilege. It’s Me, Chelsea. One of the things it touched on was voter suppression through rules around voter ID. It’s an …
Black feminist researcher Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw first proposed the concept of intersectionality in 1989 to represent the many different layers of social stratification that can combine to disadvantage people. This includes factors like race, sexual orientation, social class, age, disability, and gender. Expanding on this concept, sociologist Patricia Hill Collins described the intersectional points as the matrix …
Intersectionality and What it Means for Mental Health Read More »
Is access to health care a right that should be shared by all people regardless of socioeconomic status? Or is it a privilege that belongs to those who can afford to pay? Views on that seem to depend a lot on where people live. Growing up in Canada, all I ever knew was a public …
It’s easy to think of feminism as something that’s solely about boosting up the status of women. I would argue, though, that feminism is something that can lift us all up. Gender stereotypes People may enact feminist beliefs in different ways, but at its core, feminism recognizes how traditional gender roles, stereotypes, and expectations have …
