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numinousdread Fell down a "traveler" forum rabbithole.
When I first learned about crustpunks as a teenager, I felt pretty grossed out by what I saw as "privileged people" choosing to be homeless. I didn't have a well-articulated objection-- it just felt kind of perverse and appropriative. I remember seeing a crustpunk and his dog at Union Station on my school fieldtrip and thinking something like, "He's taking resources from Real Homeless People by choosing to be homeless" or "So you think homelessness is cool???".
Reading this forum, though, it seems like a chunk of them are burnt-out and depressed by the demands of a full-time job, and looking to ek out a small life outside that. One person talked about their cycle of taking a job, working for six months, and quitting due to the ensuing mental health crisis. One guy talks about quitting a joyless job that ate decades of his life. There are also a disproportionate number of trans people. All in all, it's kinda hard for me to feel moral reproach for people looking lives that don't make them miserable, and even the apparently romanticizing aspects of this subculture seem to help people redefine not being able to or wanting to function in a 9-to-5 job as opening up possibilities rather than as a dead-end or failed life. (I feel like I've seen a lot of trans and disabled people embrace a similarly bohemian ethos, and perhaps it's a self-protective framing.)
Do I think living as a traveler will help the people posting about quitting their awful jobs? Is it, like a prudent choice? Well, I'm not going to make that call for someone else-- nor would I give blanket suggestions about other high-risk ways of operating outside the official economy, e.g. sex work. I'm not saying nobody is ever qualified or justified in giving advice about life choices like these, just that a lot of it amounts to kneejerk paternalism.
Anti-appropriation sentiments often boil down to "You haven't deal with what I've dealt with, so you shouldn't get to take the cool stuff or resources associated with my identity." "My culture is not a costume", etc. And, like, not sure if that's even the case here-- because homelessness is a social/material position that people descriptively move in and out of, right? If you're choosing to live as homeless, you are homeless, with all the material consequences that entails-- regardless of how you ended up that way or how you feel about it.
I'm sure there are complexities I'm not addressing here, but I was pretty much wrong as a teenager, I think.
And of course, I feel nowadays that everyone should have some bare minimum social support, and so I'm not too concerned about "the wrong" people getting resources. "You've brought this on yourself, so you don't deserve sympathy" is not generally, like, upstream of good decision-making about helping vulnerable people, imho. Certainly I could choose not to transition!
When I first learned about crustpunks as a teenager, I felt pretty grossed out by what I saw as "privileged people" choosing to be homeless. I didn't have a well-articulated objection-- it just felt kind of perverse and appropriative. I remember seeing a crustpunk and his dog at Union Station on my school fieldtrip and thinking something like, "He's taking resources from Real Homeless People by choosing to be homeless" or "So you think homelessness is cool???".
Reading this forum, though, it seems like a chunk of them are burnt-out and depressed by the demands of a full-time job, and looking to ek out a small life outside that. One person talked about their cycle of taking a job, working for six months, and quitting due to the ensuing mental health crisis. One guy talks about quitting a joyless job that ate decades of his life. There are also a disproportionate number of trans people. All in all, it's kinda hard for me to feel moral reproach for people looking lives that don't make them miserable, and even the apparently romanticizing aspects of this subculture seem to help people redefine not being able to or wanting to function in a 9-to-5 job as opening up possibilities rather than as a dead-end or failed life. (I feel like I've seen a lot of trans and disabled people embrace a similarly bohemian ethos, and perhaps it's a self-protective framing.)
Do I think living as a traveler will help the people posting about quitting their awful jobs? Is it, like a prudent choice? Well, I'm not going to make that call for someone else-- nor would I give blanket suggestions about other high-risk ways of operating outside the official economy, e.g. sex work. I'm not saying nobody is ever qualified or justified in giving advice about life choices like these, just that a lot of it amounts to kneejerk paternalism.
Anti-appropriation sentiments often boil down to "You haven't deal with what I've dealt with, so you shouldn't get to take the cool stuff or resources associated with my identity." "My culture is not a costume", etc. And, like, not sure if that's even the case here-- because homelessness is a social/material position that people descriptively move in and out of, right? If you're choosing to live as homeless, you are homeless, with all the material consequences that entails-- regardless of how you ended up that way or how you feel about it.
I'm sure there are complexities I'm not addressing here, but I was pretty much wrong as a teenager, I think.
And of course, I feel nowadays that everyone should have some bare minimum social support, and so I'm not too concerned about "the wrong" people getting resources. "You've brought this on yourself, so you don't deserve sympathy" is not generally, like, upstream of good decision-making about helping vulnerable people, imho. Certainly I could choose not to transition!
