(This is a sad rant that I suspect will make no sense as I type but I've been struggling with these feelings for a while now so I'm going to attempt articulating them, however terribly)

Today I saw a post on my front page where some person had argued that stay-at-home mothers deserved to be paid a salary. The comments were full of women professing their disdain for the idea, because what mother would ever demand payment for something that automatically and inherently gives her such joy??? The very title of the post was "And who will pay for this?"

On this sub we talk about how "women's" work is undervalued, how unpaid emotional labour is assumed to be the purview of women and femmes, how it's important that we as individuals prioritise our health and abilities, ask for help and acknowledgment, and express the need for our efforts to be valued. We talk, sometimes, about how to change how society views labour - but that's socialist talk and rarely gets much traction.

I am not a very educated person when it comes to the intricacies of policy, whether social or economic. My political views are mostly cobbled together from my ideas of the effects that historical choices by ruling classes and elites have had on marginalized populations, drawn from adjacent study and a lot of listening. I consider myself a socialist, an environmentalist and an intersectional feminist not because I have conducted rigorous study but because I am filled with physical pain and inarticulate rage over blatant inequities which our societies perpetuate.

At this time I'm in a city in my country that I dislike, surrounded by people with whom I share little to no ideological ground. I feel inexpressibly lonely watching the people around me live their lives mostly ignorant and uninterested in the larger implications of their choices, their actions, and often their very existence. I miss being around people who examined their privileges and questioned the ethics of their choices. I feel like a snob, expecting thoughts in others that my own privilege brought me to. I feel intolerant and bigoted, giving nobody a chance because they don't talk about feminism in the staffroom and caste systems during lunch. I feel like a fraud, living a meaningless life where I make no difference to anyone or anything.

I want in my heart to have some hope for humanity, I want to believe that enough people have woken up to the staggering unsustainability of our capitalist lives that I will see a revolution in my lifetime. I want to find friends and a partner who care about these things. I want to be able to sign in to the only social media space I allow myself and not see a bunch of pro-capitalist anti-leftist propaganda and dogwhistles everywhere I turn.

I'm just really sad and I hate what reading Reddit comments has done to my faith in anything. I'm so very exhausted seeing how entrenched the idea of "SOCIALISM BAD" is. I can barely articulate the rage and despair.

Okay that's all thank you ❤️