ROAD TRIP!!!
Yesterday I spent the morning in Laredo signing up VAWA and U-Visa applicants. I don't care how many free meals I get, (it was two, by the way), that work is depressing. Listening to women talk about how their husbands and boyfriends beat them and call them whores and bitches. Not my idea of a fun morning. Or afternoon. Or evening. Or night. Basically, not fun ever.
One interesting thing about working at the clinic is that I've learned more about the psychology of abusive relationships and poverty than I ever wanted to know. My parents are Republicans, and I love them dearly, but it's hard to listen to them talk about poor people since they have so little contact with actual poor people. In fact, it's hard to listen to anyone talk about poor people since there is such a gulf between what people believe poor people are like and how poor people actually behave. There is no middle ground; poor people are either salt-of-the-earth folk straight out of Grapes of Wrath or they're ignorant drunks cooking up meth in trailers and getting pregnant for welfare. There is absolutely no middle ground that acknowledges the humanity of poor people, accepting that they have flaws but are essentially human beings, no different than rich or middle class people but for less money and a worse education.
In my criminal law class in first year, I argued that women in abusive relationships should not be allowed to use battered-woman syndrome as a defense to murder of their spouses. I'm not sure my stance has changed, but I can at least accept the validity of the argument, whereas back then I dismissed it as liberal hippie bullshit. Until you meet a battered woman, you cannot dismiss battered-woman syndrome.
Yesterday I spent the morning in Laredo signing up VAWA and U-Visa applicants. I don't care how many free meals I get, (it was two, by the way), that work is depressing. Listening to women talk about how their husbands and boyfriends beat them and call them whores and bitches. Not my idea of a fun morning. Or afternoon. Or evening. Or night. Basically, not fun ever.
One interesting thing about working at the clinic is that I've learned more about the psychology of abusive relationships and poverty than I ever wanted to know. My parents are Republicans, and I love them dearly, but it's hard to listen to them talk about poor people since they have so little contact with actual poor people. In fact, it's hard to listen to anyone talk about poor people since there is such a gulf between what people believe poor people are like and how poor people actually behave. There is no middle ground; poor people are either salt-of-the-earth folk straight out of Grapes of Wrath or they're ignorant drunks cooking up meth in trailers and getting pregnant for welfare. There is absolutely no middle ground that acknowledges the humanity of poor people, accepting that they have flaws but are essentially human beings, no different than rich or middle class people but for less money and a worse education.
In my criminal law class in first year, I argued that women in abusive relationships should not be allowed to use battered-woman syndrome as a defense to murder of their spouses. I'm not sure my stance has changed, but I can at least accept the validity of the argument, whereas back then I dismissed it as liberal hippie bullshit. Until you meet a battered woman, you cannot dismiss battered-woman syndrome.