FEMINISM FOR ALL
RE: One Day At a Time [Oct 28, in which columnist Ann Romano comments on the wage-equality issues being brought to attention in Hollywood].
DEAR MERCURY—Ann Romano has written in this week's One Day at a Time about how Hollywood actresses are complaining about not being paid as much as their male counterparts in recent films. That's a good point—they should be paid as much. However, this strikes me as just the sort of opportunist, self-centered, narrow-focus feminism I was just reading about in Bell Hooks' Feminism Is for Everybody. Hooks writes about the way the early feminist movement tended to be co-opted by higher class white women who used it as a means to demand more equitable income for themselves in higher paid professions, while turning a deaf ear and a blind eye to the plight of women of color and poor women. I would respect these millionaire Hollywood actresses more if they showed their true commitment to feminism by making a public show of support for, say, the $15 an hour campaign for fast food workers, rather than merely using one plank of feminist movement to aggrandize and enrich themselves.
Reed Bellhooks
TOO CLOSE TO HOME
RE: "No-Cause Evictions Affect Monster Population" [Halloween Issue Feature, Oct 28] a guide to the city's housing situations for freshly relocated monsters, and "The City Promises More Affordable Housing Funds. Will It Follow Through?" [News, Oct 28].
DEAR MERCURY—I know you are doing your cutesy Halloween spoof article thing, and I will give it to you that it was mostly cute. Gotta draw the line at the no-cause eviction spoof, though. Not enough laugh for the soulless cynicism you are attempting to trade it in for.
Carlos Covarrubias
SIRS—The issues of affordable housing and homelessness are direct offshoots of our capitalistic system, which is the economic equivalent of the law of the jungle: the strong survive and prosper, and the weak end up on the streets. Nowhere in that great system are there provisions for making affordable housing available to those who need it, or helping the homeless. Our society has come to regard homelessness and affordable housing as problems that can't be solved, even though many other countries in the world have successfully addressed these issues. It all comes back to the pornographically unequal distribution of wealth in this country and the world, that, under the capitalistic system, continues to funnel more and more wealth to the top, and less and less to the bottom. Until the majority of those in this country get concerned with these issues, and do something about them from a humanitarian standpoint, the present situation will only worsen.
Marco
DEAR MERCURY—I'm so sick of the whining about rent increases. This is the way it ALWAYS works, dumbasses. The poor/starving artists (of which I am one) move into a slum, make it hip, then the wealthier take over while the poor/artists move on to coolify another area/town (and you'd better get used to it 'cause millions will be flooding here in the next 10-20 years). But unlike most of you assholes, I worked my ass off, saved my meager wages, didn't spend all my spare cash on weed, beer, cigarettes, and restaurant food, didn't get into credit card debt (not one penny in debt), and DIDN'T HAVE FUCKING CHILDREN I COULDN'T POSSIBLY TAKE CARE OF PROPERLY! Instead, I eventually bought a small, cheap, piece-of-shit house (only $520/month mortgage) and spent thousands of hours fixing it up with free supplies from Craigslist. Now it's worth a fortune and in less than two years, when I'm 38, I'll be living rent free while sitting on a very nice retirement fund. And yes, this does make me better than you. I'm staying, and I'm glad you're getting pushed out.
NAWD
WELL OOOH LA-LA, NAWD! While we wouldn't say we share your same level of disdain toward those who didn't get in on the ground floor of Portland's surge in home values, we do appreciate your assertive nature. Ye shall be rewarded, with two tickets to the Laurelhurst Theater, which one hopes will never leave to "coolify" someplace else.
