Saturday, January 25, 2020

Fat-shamed while being a size 4 or 6

What happens if I go to a Boston Sports Club? I am still paying almost $100/month for that membership.  When I was homeless from 2017 to 2019, paying that money gave me places in the Boston area to shower, change my clothes for work, and use a restroom.  It also gave the conglomerate another place to criminally victimize me every day, which it did, while mirthfully victim-blaming me, even though I sent several anonymous text messages to the Boston Police Crime Stoppers about the illegal voyeurism.  When the police failed to stop the problem, I published pages, for months, giving the contact information for Crime Stoppers and asking that people who knew that I was telling the truth contact Crime Stoppers.  Nobody did.  They're all enjoying their self-righteous criminality.

I have said before that homeless women at the Pine Street Inn can only take showers for 10 minutes.  That's not a lot of time to shower and also change into and out of, under other clothes, the cold, wet clothes that I kept in a plastic bag from one night to the next because I couldn't dry them after wearing them in the shower.  That's how I showered at the Pine Street Inn when I was homeless from 2014 to 2016.  You can try that in the winter when you've been cold all day and there isn't always hot water in the shower.

The Pine Street Inn also only provides showers within a designated time frame in the evening.  Homeless people can't shower there in the morning or at any other time; that entire area of the building is locked at 7:00 a.m. and people who try to shower in the morning before the showers are inaccessible are screamed at and given suspensions.  Working people who need to shower at night after the designated time frame sometimes can, although there might not be towels for them. Scheduling your life and your employment around a homeless shelter's schedule is a difficulty not known to the public, to politicians, to donors or to the media which strenuously avoids investigations of these places and publishes one feel-good story after another about homeless shelters whenever I write about what's wrong with them.

When I joined the YMCA in 2014, there were hidden, illegal cameras in those locker rooms.

This has now happened to me and everyone else who pays for those memberships in gyms run by two different organizations.

I'd like to have somewhere else to be than my apartment on my days off from work, to be able to do normal, healthy things and meet people in normal, healthy ways.  If I go to the gym, what does the conglomerate think I should do?  Change into my gym clothes in the dark in my apartment and wear them to the gym so that I'm not filmed changing my clothes in the gym locker room?  Not use the rest room while I'm at the gym? Leave the gym if I need a rest room and pay for food somewhere so I can use a rest room that's not at the gym? Not shower after working out, and spend the rest of the day in my sweaty gym clothes, until I can go back to my apartment and shower in the dark?

I can't go to the gym before work, having to live that way.  I work until late at night; even if the gym weren't closed after work, and I could change from my work clothes to my gym clothes before leaving work, I'd have to pay for an Uber or a taxi to go to my apartment from the gym, since it would be too late for public transportation.

I am paid $12.75/hour.  Most of the people whom the conglomerate has criminally victimized for years have less money than that, or earn about the same, or earn more than that but have nowhere near the average amount of money that the voyeurs have, individually or as groups.  I have told a few homeless people about the voyeurism at the Pine Street Inn and other shelters, but not many because I already told the director of the women's shelter and the then-director of security for the Pine Street Inn about it years ago and their response was to assume that I was paranoid.  If I told a lot of homeless people that they're being illegally filmed in the shelter, either they would think I was crazy or it would just add to their psychological burdens and feelings of helplessness and degradation.  I haven't told other people who have gym memberships because I know I won't be believed.

Money is power and this voyeurism is a crime of power.  It was never about what I look like, what I wear or anything else that the conglomerate has exploited to try to make its crime my fault.

I have written before about the financial disparity between the victims and the criminals in this situation.  I know that not everyone who reads what I write about that really thinks that everything will be all right if I can stop being so silly, realize how much the people who are doing this to me love me, and start having sex with them or writing for them at a much higher salary.  There is probably a range of beliefs among the voyeurs, from total denial that the voyeurism is criminal to sheer cowardice.