• regenerativedespair [she/her]
      ·
      edit-2
      3 years ago

      It's to signify that the places that houseless people reside, are in fact their homes, and each daily "sweep" they face is a grossly indecent, intolerable, violent violation of their right to exist. It signifies that this must be stopped, by any means necessary, and that the armed gangs of the state must be confronted in order to demonstrate real working class solidarity and house these people in all the vacant homes. It asserts that this is a solvable, specific problem in a person's life, not something abstract or essential to their "nature" or something that they "deserved". It is a way to rhetorically resist the daily, casual and explicit characterization of these people as sub-human.

      But you're right, now these liberals will use it as a way to feel part of a movement that they violently suppress

          • read_freire [they/them]
            ·
            edit-2
            3 years ago

            yeah, the parenthetical is a signal to their petit bourgeosie and labor aristocrat readers to map radicals' use of houseless onto homeless and ignore any cognitive dissonance they might have if they had to actually consider what the deliberate use of houseless means

            it's also so fucking stupid, like houseless isn't self-explanatory

            to your point, it's the cooption of liberatory discourse in action though. I just don't think that can be collapsed into some stupidpol sarcastic clap comment

      • Homestar440 [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Ooo, let me try:

        We have a terrible homelessness problem, what do we do?

        Actually, those people are houseless, not homeless.

        Ahhhh, well then great news, we have solved the homelessness crisis!

        • read_freire [they/them]
          ·
          edit-2
          3 years ago

          lol getting mad at the houseless part is missing the fucking point (and yet another example of chapos stop parroting stupidpol shit challenge). houseless or unhoused is preferred because it gets to the heart of the problem.

          it also highlights the incredibly offensive dehumanization involved when folks use homeless as a noun, which also happens here

          the fact that they felt the need to qualify it with a parenthetical (homeless) like it's not clear what the fuck houseless means is the thing to dunk on

          to the actually good point about the cooption of liberatory discourse, this is one of the more blatant examples

          • Homestar440 [he/him]
            ·
            3 years ago

            Ok, fair enough, I didn't know this. I've never considered homelessness shameful, it's shameful of our society, so I didn't make the association. I'm not sure that changing the word is gonna change the attitude of the kind of person that does refer to human beings as "the homeless" though, but I'll use whatever language is preferred by those effected.

            • read_freire [they/them]
              ·
              3 years ago

              previously I would've said that it's real hard to misinterpret houseless but that tweet tells us that they're definitely going to

              • Homestar440 [he/him]
                ·
                3 years ago

                The way I see it, the dehumanizing comes from the toxic attitudes of asshole people, I don't think changing the wording is gonna change those attitudes. I feel like they're still gonna assume that "houseless" people are lazy, stupid and useless just as they currently think "the homeless" are, ya know? Again, though, def not gonna die on this molehill, so I'll gladly adjust.