L’s understanding of the American Dream as an objective ideal is the one that’s been advertised by America itself. She explains it as the idea that “no matter who you are… you, like everyone else in the society, have a chance.”
While growing up as a top student in the American Northeast, however, she soon found out that achieving this advertised dream would involve more barriers for her than her peers. “I fell in love with a girl and I was so scared,” she says. “I thought something was wrong with me, and then for quite a while I wanted to die.”
Her bisexuality made her feel outcasted in both a town and family that were homophobic. The only other openly queer person she knew of was Tracy Chapman, whose music became a powerful point of solace for L in a society that gave her little other places to turn. This largely isolating situation served to make her road to success a constant uphill battle in both her relationships and her life. “I have a lot of resentment about the homophobic society in which we live because I can see the ways that it contributed to my not realizing my dream,” she explains. “I had no support.”
I would like to see people able to live together in a community in a way that is non-hierarchical and where people’s basic needs are getting met.
These days, her socio-economic class has further kept her from living a life that’s as easy as some people around her. She cites discrepancies in labor as a big reason why it’s nearly impossible for her to actively better her situation. A specific example she gave was the struggle to stay warm in the winter. For someone more well off, it takes them a second to change the thermostat. “Meanwhile for me, we couldn’t afford firewood so we had to scrounge firewood from the woods around our house to try to burn,” she said. “I did some math; I’m a math teacher so I really sat down and tried to figure this out… I spend about 1,000 times as much effort to stay warm as [someone better-off] does every month.”
To compound the issue, heating is only one task of many. This combined with other chores, such as maintaining electricity and getting water (tasks that also contain this extreme class discrepancy in energy expended), all combine to create a stark contrast among classes in free time and, subsequently, opportunity. Additionally, this class barrier affects more than just individuals fighting for themselves; it stifles the entire group’s ability to advocate for lasting change. “Most of the energy in activism and community service in our culture is getting totally sucked up by just trying to help the many many people whose basic needs aren’t getting met… in a system that’s designed to create people whose needs aren’t getting met,” she says.
All of this has culminated to shape her personal American Dream into now being one of empathy and fairness, holding the goal of community success as paramount. “Dismantling that bullshit is basically my dream,” she says. “I would like to see people able to live together in a community in a way that is non-hierarchical and where people’s basic needs are getting met.”
L is…
- 48 Years-Old
- Female
- White
- Working Class
- Bisexual
