Blogging Against Disablism Day 2014

Welcome to Blogging Against Disablism Day 2014!

Thanks very much to everyone who helped to spread the word and to everyone who has blogging against disablism, ableism and disability discrimination these last few days.

If you have a post for Blogging Against Disablism, please leave a comment including the URL (web address) of your post and the catergory your post fits best. Please also link back here, wherever possible (we're at http://tinyurl.com/BADday2014).

We'll carry on updating this post as any late-comers arrive. We've also been posting links to every blog using the Twitter stream @BADDtweets and these will automatically be posted onto our Facebook Page.

Blogging Against Disablism 2014

Employment (Disability discrimination in the workplace, recruitment issues and unemployment).  Benefit Scrounging Scum:  Hard Working Species, The 'Striver Scrounger' EmsyBlog:  Access To…oh forget it Murder of Goths:  Employ me? Work and disability hurdles Random Happenings and Observations:  Attitudes towards Disabled People Scope:  ‘You’ve got so much stacked against you’ This ain't livin':  Sheltered Workshops Education (Attitudes and practical issues effecting disabled people and the discussion of disability in education, from preschool to university and workplace training.) Friendly crips and our friends:  How ablism stopped me learning how to teach against ablism Queen Cakeface:  Academic Ableism - How Formal Education is Failing the Disabled and Chronically Ill Rolling with the Punches:  Academic Battles That Crazy Crippled Chick:  One Year Ago - What Ableism Didn't Do Yes, That Too:  Not what I was planning on but it's ableism and I'm against it Other Access Issues (Posts about any kind of access issue in the built environment, shops, services and various organisations. By "access issues" I mean anything which enables or disenables a person from doing what everyone else is able to do.) Black Telephone:  The Prom Dress A Blind Man's Journey:  Housing for All Crippled, Queer, Anglo-European Ranter: Product Packaging Problems & Solutions?) Damn the Muse:  Service plans gone haywire Planat Community Blog: Accessible travel - issues and solutions World of Accessible Toilets:  Dignity Down the Pan Definition and Analysis of Disablism/ Ableism The Bardo Group:  Still Here bottomfacedotcom:  Are you disablist/ableist?  Low Visionary:  From disableism to human rights Making rights make sense:  Blogging against ‘disablism’ pseudoliving:  Nothing About Us Without Us? The Language of Disablism(Posts about the language which surrounds disability and the way that it may empower or disempower us.) Murder of Goths:  Worst things you can say Disablism Interacting with Other 'Isms' (Posts about the way in which various discriminations interact; the way that the prejudice experienced as a disabled person may be compounded by race, gender, age, sexuality etc..) Indigo Jo Blogs:  Dudes Disablism in Literature, Culture and the Media Bridgeanne art and writing:  Thoughts re writing ‘Girl with a White Dog’ Cracked Mirror in Shalott:  I'm Not a Side Story Diary of a Goldfish:  Against "Awareness" Funky Mango's Musings:  Writing semi-autobiographical fiction about disability A Hot Bath Won't Cure It:  Invisible Disability – disablism from different perspectives Kink Praxis:  Imagining Disabled Characters in Erotica Maijan ilmestykset:  Nasevaa ableismia / Snappy ableism Thoughts of a crinllys:  Rejection in a sci-fi world Tsana's Reads and Reviews:  Blogging Against Disablism  Visibility Fiction:  Getting it wrong – Writing disability in fiction A Writer In A Wheelchair:  Not such an equal “ism” History Disability Studies, Temple U.:  Wikipedia Against Disablism Relationships, Love and Sex Journeymouse:  Teaching Someone Else to Live With An Invisible Disability Living Disabled:  Peace, Anger, and Other (blasted) People Sport AthletesFirst:  A challenge to coaches AthletesFirst:  Not quite visible Other Feminist Sonar:  Valuing the Life Criptastic I (heart symbol) the Phylum Chordata:  Repercussions Philip Patston:  Blogging against blogging against disablism Powerful Bitch:  The Big BADD Cripple The Social Worker Who Became Disabled:  Are Social Workers Part of the Problem?  Poetry and Fiction against Disablism As Your World Changes:  Weary Words from a White Cane Warrior Ballastexistenz:  When we died, we found each other Diary of Mister Goldfish: Clippity Cloppity Goat and the Dragon Here be Prose:  Someday Same Difference:  Disablism is Everywhere Untitled:  BADD14

General Thoughts on Disablism Accessibility NZ:  Don’t use disability as the bogeyman AZ is Amazing:  Don't put words in my mouth Bigger on the Inside:  The fundamental interconnectedness of all things The Chronic Chronicles:  Ignorance, Exclusion and Invisibility - the reality of being disabled in the UK Dannilion.com:  Internalised Disablism Diary of Mister Goldfish:  Need for Speed The eGremlin:  Things are not always what they seem The Haps:  The Question Journeys:  Disability Stories - Resistance, Resilience, and Community Meriannen Mielessä: Pyörätuolityttö | The Wheelchair Girl  Minister of Propaganda for the Decepticon Empire:  Blogging Against Disablism Day More Than Disorganised:  Internalised Disablism Naked Vegan Cooking:  Special Blogging Against Disablism Day Post Nightengalesknd:  Why it matters that "ablism" isn't in spell-check Stand Tall Through Everything:  I’m A Reluctant Advocate Sticking the Corners:  Tried and True Ways to Eliminate People with Disabilities The Notes Which Do Not Fit:  That is such an obscure... Rolling with the Punches:  Support and Independence This Is My Blog:  Less hostility, please! Words I Wheel By:  Dis/Ableism, Privilege, and Assumptions yetanotherlefty:  In-between Parenting Issues(whether disabled parents or the parents of a disabled child.) Will Write for Tomato Pie:  Blogging Against Disablism Impairment-Specific Prejudice Blogging Astrid:  Mental Illness Is Real Illness Too Brain under construction:  Monster in the Midst Endocrine Gremlin:  Blogging Against Disablism Day 2014 The Eternal Pursuit of Love and Laughter:  Blogging Against Disablism Day 2014 The Hidden Village of Aspergers:  Crying On The Webcam Life In Deep Water:  The Relationship Between Depression & Alcohol & Its Effects On Relationships Mitäpä jos sä pelkäät turhaan:  Bloggaus vammaisuuden ennakkoluuloja vastaan The Not-So-Simple Life:  It's Time To Talk  Sticking the Corners:  Just Say No to Needy Busybodies Personal Journeys Posts about learning experiences and realisations authors have had about the nature of disability discrimination and the impact on their lives. Ballastexistenz:  I am not your fairy tale miracle cure story Katherine Hayward, my life with cerebral palsy:   Blogging Against Disablism Day 2014  My thoughts. About me, and ME:  Help! Never That Easy:  Hulking Out People Aren't Broken:  An InConvenient Truth Disablism and Politics (For example, the political currency of disability, anti-discrimination legislation, etc.) Write To Protest:  The Right to Life Bullying, Harassment and Hate Crime Ballastexistenz:  After this, I am never again putting up with bullies telling me that my medical conditions are imaginary The F-Word:  Disablism and microaggressions Radical Neurodivergence Speaking:  Parents are the worst ableists That Crazy Crippled Chick:  Disability Is Not Your Get Out of Jail Free Card Disability, Life and Death Ange's blog:  Carers should act in solidarity - not martyrdom  Ballastexistenz:  Love, Fear, Death, and Disability The Voyage:  Stop Excusing Murder

On Cupcake Fascism & Class War

The only cupcakes I've ever eaten were stolen. They were stolen, they were sticky and they were sweet. That's the first thing Tom Whyman gets wrong in What is Cupcake Fascism?; cupcakes are all style and little substance, but over half that substance is buttercream. They are neither dry, nor wholesome, no lacking in goo, but rich, sickly sweet and impossible to consume without getting one's fingers sticky. Unless you can open your mouth really, really wide. This is both metaphor and truth.

Meanwhile, in another piece on class, The Working Classes Don't Want To Be Hard-Working Families, Selina Todd writes,

"Sit my extended family around a table and you'd have white- and blue-collar workers, the sick, the old, people in council housing, and families with two cars and a nice house but large debts to pay for them. This is replicated all over Britain. There is no static "underclass" and neither is there a robust middle class: instead, there are a lot of people who have to work for a living and, because of that fact, choose to identify as working class."

This a world I recognise. It's hard for left-wing commentators to admit this, because it's much harder to get to grips with than a binary world of gin-swilling middle classes versus the pasty-munching working people, but we're pretty much mixed in. The one massive flaw in Grayson Perry's truly excellent 2012 series on social class and aesthetic taste (do watch it if you didn't) is the tremendous leap between the working and supposedly middle class folk he spoke to - a gap which could be represented by years of education, multiples of annual income, several degrees latitude and in fact, most of the UK's population.

And you know the thing that makes this stuff even harder? We're mixed in but not at all blended. Class still exists and it still matters. There is rising wealth inequality. The possibility of home-ownership is more or less hereditary now. We're being governed by toffs who were born into wealth and use their positions as public servants to generate more for themselves and their friends.

That's why Tom Whyman wants to call middle class culture fascist and takes aim at the unmissable target of nostalgic twee. I get class hatred. I was part of the Assisted Places Scheme. Being a precocious child who asked such questions, my mother informed me we were, "Lower-middle-class, fallen on hard times."

The mothers at school intimidated mine, so I observed their vulgarities. In those days, posh women wore Alice bands ("Grown women, wearing Alice bands!" my teenage self would sneer). They had handbags with thick gold-coloured chain instead of a strap. They often wore necklaces, generally pearls, outside their blouse collars or polo-necks - jewellery outside their clothing, for crying out loud! They wore a lot of make-up, some of them had had cosmetic surgery and they drove the first family-friendly 4x4s, the ridicule of which was clear to me, years before anyone called them Chelsea Tractors. These women seemed like characterless china dolls next to my wild-haired Mum, who dressed sensibly and practically and cycled everywhere.

Whyman isn't moving far beyond my teenage self as he sneers at modern middle-class hipster aesthetics. I don't entirely object to the sneering (although I do play ukulele). The tea parties, Liberty prints and shelfies of middle-class culture are routinely privileged as clever and tasteful, while the clubs, leopard prints and magazine racks of working people are not. The Guardian publishes dazzlingly sycophantic pieces like this about a very wealthy young woman using her wealth to get wealthier like that's somehow a worthy and interesting creative exercise.

I really enjoy The Great British Sewing Bee, The Great British Bake Off and BBC Three's Hair, which was barely spoken about but applied exactly the same format to amateur hairdressing (three challenges over two days each episode, the second day dedicated to something fancy). I like this format - I like to see ordinary folk showing off what they can do. I'd like to see a woodwork version next, please.

Despite the identical format, Hair was punctuated with random pop music and presented by Steve Jones, a sort of Welsh Father Dougal who asked what a quiff was, despite having a rather impressive example directly above his frowning forehead. Hair was not the subject of newspaper review, speculation about who deserved to win or any declaration that hair-dressing was the new black. Sewing and baking are fairly classless activities (although wealthier folk often have more time to muck about with more expensive materials, without needing a practical purpose or special occasion), but apparently, hairdressing - at least as skillful, creative and useful as baking or sewing - just can't be packaged as gentle and genteel.

Thus, as I say, I don't entirely object to the sneering. Sewing Bee played Doris Day to introduce an anorak.

But this sneering is always aimed at feminine aesthetics. It is the mob baying for Marie Antoinette; demands to strangle the thirty-five year old in bobby-socks and fairy-wings with her own designer bunting. Another crack in Whyman's argument is that, of course, feminine fashions (which is what cupcakes are) are very often infantile. At once point it was impossible to buy an adult woman's jersey nightdress without a big teddy on the front and a slogan about snuggle-time or feeling sleepy-woo. In the 1970s, a lot of women seemed to dress like Little Bo Peep.

And then Whyman gets it completely wrong about the 2011 London Riots. Yes, they were kicked off by the police killing of Mark Duggan, along with austerity measures that place the overwhelming burden on the poor and the young - it wasn't a random occurrence. But the riots were a nightmare for many ordinary people in London, especially poor, vulnerable, disabled and older people. Attempting to clear up and make things better was not about passive-aggressively asserting middle class values, but trying to put things right, tidying up one's own backyard after the storm, taking care of one's neighbours. People who want peace on the streets are not automatic supporters of the regime.

Meanwhile, what those rioters did? The young poor (and a fair number who weren't so poor and weren't so young) were exploiting a situation of over-stretched resources to their material advantage. Rather like, you know, our senior politicians. Except, of course, the kids got punished.

A busty 18th century lady with a ship on her head,
admiring a rather large cupcake.

Marie Antoinette once had her hair done up with a silly great ship in it (a look, incidentally recreated on BBC Three's Hair). She never did tell anyone to eat cake, but she lost her head for looking like a ridiculous hedonist at a time of national hardship and frustration. She never had an significant power. Nautical hairstyles were not the reasons for poverty and oppression in pre-revolutionary France.

There are political attitudes in our country, many class-based, which are causing us big problems; the belief that a person's value is measured by their wealth, and that wealth-creation is the highest possible virtue. The very middle-class belief that charity, rather than welfare, is a sensible way of providing for people in financial difficulty (it feels so good to help out). The belief that poor people are lazy, feckless and dangerous. Whatever belief you'd like to attribute to the fact that youngsters received custodial sentences for petty theft during the 2011 Riots, while Maria Miller stole £5800 and didn't even get the sack.

The cupcakes I had, even with the elicit thrill of having stolen them, weren't that special. My Granny, baker and cake-decorator extraordinaire was scandalised when my cousin had cupcakes instead of wedding cake ("They're mostly just buttercream!"). So we're agreed, I feel, that people should eat more substantial and flavoursome baked goods.

But twee is background; stage dressing. It is an aesthetic, not divorced from our social and political problems, certainly not immune from critique, but not to targeted in place of the widening wealth gap, increasing poverty, deteriorating working conditions and political disenchantment.

Plus it's hard to believe someone who uses the phrase Cupcake Fascism can really mean it when they conclude, "you are just not thinking about the matter dialetically enough."

Also, how can you possibly illustrate an article with the phrase Cupcake Fascism with anything but a cupcake with a swastika on it?  I found some on a site promoting the swastika as a positive symbol we should reclaim from Nazism. But someone could have at least drawn one.

Oh and if you're interested/ bored enough to get down this far, you might like Is 'cupcake feminism' all empty calories? from 2012, which discusses some of these topics from a different angle.

Some Reading Matter

It's ages since I've made a post of links, but I seem to have seen several I really want to share.

Wheelchair Dancer has been writing about a revamp of Ironside, the (originally 70s, I guess) American TV series with a wheelchair-using detective. WD's posts on this have been phenomenal and she's promised a fourth. So far we have:

• Ironside I: The Non-disabled Role/ Roll again about the justifications used to cast a non-disabled actor as the leading disabled character, descriptions of the actor trying to master acting disabled etc..
• Ironside II: The Rough Rider Condom Chair about the intersection of straight masculinity and disability in the character of Ironside and his impractical wheelchair.
• Ironside III: Criminal Minds, Luther about the casting of a black man as Ironside and the intersection of race and disability.

Read them all.  Read the fourth one when its published. Okay? Good.

Also:

Biphobia is not (only) an LBGT issue, on how straight folk can't blame queer folk for biphobia.

Disability in Kidlit: A new blog providing "reviews, guest posts and discussions about the portrayal of disabilities in MG/ YA fiction".  I know YA is Young Adult. Apparently MG, in this context, is Middle-Grade.

This is really old, but I first saw it this summer: Why Film Schools Teach Screenwriters Not To Pass The Bechdel Test - infuriating and insightful.
.
I read this after I posted this blog, but it needs to be here: A geek against Gok
- Zoe Burgess on the manipulation and humiliation of a TV show and the triumph of a geek over adversity.

Some powerful personal posts:

One Classroom, Two Genders - The experiences of a trans woman when identified as a man, then as a woman, by her students.

Peeling Back The Layers of Shame: Talking About My Mother - Rachel describes the shame she has felt for not loving her mother, and how that continues to effect her years after her mother's death.

My Mother-in-law and Me - Lucy tells the story of a mother-in-law, who has always disapproved of Lucy because of her impairments.

This is What You're Missing: An American Love Story - A deeply moving story of sisterly love and grief.

On Being An Auntie (again). NTE watches her new nephew come into the world.


I'm sure there were other things, but usefully, my reader has just been closed for maintenance.

Since I'm here, I'm guest-blogging at the F-Word this month.  So far, I've written about women abusers and sex tips.

Domestic Violence & The Welfare State

It's one of the most cynical propaganda moves this government has taken, to use a bizarre crime that lead to the deaths of six children to justify cutting the incomes of the poor.  Mick Philpott accidentally killed six of his seventeen children whilst attempting to frame his ex-girlfriend for arson, with the help of his abused wife and their male lover.

This crime is about domestic violence. Philpott was violent and controlling towards the women and children in his life and the arson was part of this. The judge summed this up brilliantly and Polly Neale from Women's Aid wrote about the absence of "domestic violence" in the media discussion.

There is, in fact, a link between the welfare state and the deaths of the Philpott children.  Although domestic violence can effect anyone, from any walk of life, people in poverty are more likely to experience domestic abuse.

Sometimes, this is explained as if being poor adds more pressure on relationships (it certainly does) and this pressure leads to violence.  This is a tragic oversimplification. People don't become violent when they have less money. What poverty does is makes people more vulnerable to being abused and abusers - whatever their income or class background - prey on the vulnerable.

If we really cared to, there are various ways in which this problem could be addressed:



1. The benefits system is likely to make a person more vulnerable to control and manipulation.

Given that the Chancellor of the Exchequer effectively argued that Philpott's children should not exist, it should be no surprise that poverty and the welfare system can easily wreck a person's self-esteem. It can often feel that your money is not really your own, that you are a burden on others, that you are failing to make a contribution. You are surrounded by materialist images of happiness which are entirely unattainable. If you are working, you are likely to be in unstable, insecure employment. If you are not working, you may be locked in an increasingly desperate hunt for work, taking rejection after rejection. If you unable to work through ill health, caring responsibilities or other circumstances, then it can feel like your life has come to a dead end, that you have failed as a person, as a partner, as a parent.

Much of this is instantly solved with a higher minimum wage.  Most benefits claimants below retirement age are in work - as both Mick Philpott's partners were - but not earning enough to live on. As Louise McCudden writes, "We shouldn’t be ashamed of having a welfare state but we should be more ashamed of what it represents. The amount we spend on benefits is a measure of how much poverty and inequality we are, as a society, prepared to tolerate."

Even when it is providing an adequate income, the benefits agency treats people badly. The language letters and agency workers use is often accusatory, untrusting; they've got their eye on you. You are constantly asked to justify yourself, your limitations and, often enough, made to argue with decision-makers who say that you (your family, friends and even your doctors) are being dishonest.

The language the government and media use about benefits claimants - all of us - is even worse. Is there any other group of people in our society where a newspaper could print a photograph of six children, victims of arson, with the headline describing them as a "Vile Product" of anything?

Groups like young single mothers have been stained by this rhetoric for years - much longer than the current more widespread assault on those who need state help to live.  Impoverished single women with babies, especially if they are (or could pass for) teenagers have long been condemned as roundabout prostitutes; girls who, despite their extreme youth and vulnerability, cynically set out to have unprotected sex in order to have a meal-ticket child that they will treat like a shiny new doll.  Single mothers and their children are particularly vulnerable to abuse, not because these women are feckless and promiscuous and let any man into their homes, but because years of poor treatment, media rhetoric and the judgement of their neighbours has made them feel pretty rotten about themselves.

And so when someone is nice to you, says they love you despite all this, but occasionally hits you and uses the same derogatory language as our leading politicians...


2. Factors which make a person vulnerable to domestic violence also make them more likely to be poor. 

Disabled people, including those with mental ill health, single parents, adults who have grown up in the care system, adults who were abused as children, trans people, immigrants, people who have experienced massive disruption in their lives such as serious illness, injury, bereavement or desertion are all more vulnerable to domestic abuse regardless of their financial situation. But they are also much more likely to be poor, to have low or unstable incomes or to be unable to work or find work.

This doesn't happen by accident.  This is caused by inequality, prejudice and discrimination within our society. There will always be richer folk and poorer folk, always be folk who lack confidence and are more easily taken advantage of.  But it is completely unnecessary that disadvantage and vulnerability should be so often packaged together like this, that superficial factors about a person's identity should make it possible to predict one's chances of falling victim to a particular kind of life-altering violent crime.



3. Our welfare system takes an all or nothing approach to live-in romantic relationships.

If you share a bed with someone on a regular basis and need to claim an income-related benefit, you will be considered living together as if married. You will also be treated as if you share financial responsibility for any children you have. If one of you is earning, that could mean the other person is no longer entitled to financial support, or has that financial support greatly reduced. This occurs regardless of the nature of your relationship, the commitment you have, the things you agree to between yourselves.

Single claimants who live in shared houses, especially with housemates of other genders, frequently have to prove that they are not, in fact romantically partnered.  Couples who are getting together must inform the benefits agencies as soon as they begin to live together, as if there is a single magic cut-off point between complete independence and complete interdependence.

This causes all manner of problems, but it makes people significantly more vulnerable to domestic abuse in various ways:

• It causes victims to be financially dependent on their abusers.
• It causes abusers to be financially dependent on their victims. This does not necessarily put victims in a position of power, especially when a situation of financial dependence hasn't been chosen by either party. 
• It causes victims and abusers to be bound together in any situation of fraud. An abuser may outright refuse to be honest about her income, she may be working for cash that she keeps for herself, or have money stashed away that only she may access. A victim may be in a position where he must either commit fraud or have no money to pay the rent.
• It complicates step-parenting relationships.  A parent's partner is condemned to be either completely informal or at least partly financially responsible for a child, this relationship determined by the state as opposed to anybody's feelings or level of commitment.
• It fosters artificial progressions within a relationship. Abusive relationships tend to progress very quickly as abusers try to achieve the maximum amount of control over their victims as soon as possible; moving in together, becoming financially entangled, getting pregnant and so forth. The black and white model forced upon the relationships of benefits claimants make this much easier; there's little room for gradually getting together and experimenting with living arrangements.
• It isolates people in their relationships. Because financial dependency kicks into place the moment a couple moves in together, it places pressure on claimants to keep their relationships quiet or even secret - sneaking a partner out the back door in the morning - until the couple has come to a position where they are happy to live together permanently and become financially intertwined. In some cases, if an abuser insists on moving in but refuses to contribute financially, a victim may be forced into outright lies about their relationship, making it extremely difficult to seek help.  Abusers thrive on such isolation. 

All this makes people on benefits and their families much more vulnerable to abuse. It makes children more vulnerable to abuse. This is another major factor effecting the statistics which suggest less favorable outcomes of the children of single parents.

It is tricky to work out how this is solved - clearly, it is much cheaper for two people to live together as a family unit than to live apart and an unemployed person with a working partner isn't so badly off. However, a situation of instant and total dependence should and could be avoided. For example, it should never be the case that a disabled person, twice as vulnerable to domestic violence as a non-disabled person, should become completely dependent on a partner if they cannot work, as many are today.


4. In the absence of talent or privilege, abusers are often unemployable. 

Abusers tend to be narcissists, angry at a world which will never treat them with due deference, gratitude and material rewards appropriate to their greatness. There are some very rich and powerful narcissists about, but they have been very lucky, talented in a particular way or born into wealth and privilege. Even then, they will never quite get the treatment they believe they deserve, and tend to fly off the handle if a partner, child, employee or populus doesn't behave exactly as they'd wish.

Lower down the social scale, narcissism is a bigger problem for the individual - after all, they deserve to be wealthy, successful and admired, so something's gone wrong if they're not (and that has to be somebody's fault). It's hard to hold down a normal job because it's beneath them, their colleagues and bosses are all idiots, everyone they deal with is stupid and weak. They are not ordinary people with ordinary problems; they are the smartest, wisest, most generous people in the world, so their potential is completely wasted if they are not in charge, not telling everyone how things should be done.

Mick Philpott was able to make himself a little kingdom to rule over; so many children, multiple partners whose lives he micromanaged, isolated from the rest of the world - in part, by their fame as a huge polyamorous family living in a council house (described as workless, even though it was only the patriarch who didn't work). But although the sheer size of his family is extraordinary, it's not an extraordinary tactic - it is amazing to me that anyone could assume he wanted more children in order to claim more benefits (You can't make a profit out of having babies for benefits). He simply wanted to control his women and expand his dominion.

We all know poor but abusive people who can comfortably consider themselves Caesar in their own homes, and maybe one other safe environment; the local pub, a church, an on-line forum - places where their charm works well enough and, for whatever reason, expectations of decent behaviour and competence are low.

And that's not the fault of systems, only the fault of society which allows such people to operate, which prefers to talk about a man's unemployment rather than his domestic violence when it is his domestic violence which has killed six children. A society which condemns an entire family - not just innocent children but innocent dead children - because of the unemployment of the man who happens to be in charge. A society where many people seem to think that those kids died because of the social class they were born into as opposed to an act of violent revenge perpetrated by their abusive father.