'vulnerability is disqualifying'
For a while now I've been saying something like 'vulnerability is disqualifying' and while I still think it's a good shorthand, I wanted to think this through a little more as relying on unexamined conceptual shorthand can sometimes result in unrealized gaps in my thinking. What I've meant by the phrase is that people who get hurt (as ever my go-to reference point is workplace injuries, but covid injuries seem to be working similarly, and my mom's recent experience with needing surgery are similar) will, by virtue of getting hurt, find that they don't have the same claims-making ability as before they got hurt. This means that people pre-vulnerability tend to imagine themselves being taken seriously post-vulnerability in the way they were before things went awry for them (this is badly worded, in part because who isn't vulnerable, really? What I really mean by vulnerability here is 'when disaster strikes), but that imagining is mistaken because having become vulnerable - having had disaster strikes - rearranges people's claims-making power for the worse.
I think that's basically right but not exactly right. Really what I think is the case is that a lot of people in pre-disaster life tended to assume - were encouraged to assume - that it was unlikely that disaster would strike and that if it did happen, there'd be resources and solidarity. The reality though is that for whatever position people are in within the pyramid of the capitalist system, there are legitimating ideologies that kick in to justify that location. Having previously been in some other position doesn't help people really. Someone who falls downward unexpectedly is likely to be living with echoes of the ideologies that legitimated their prior position and to expect that they can do something to get them out of their new position - 'this shouldn't happen to someone like me! I did everything right!' and 'there should be help for someone like me!' kinda thing. And that basically never works, they're just in denial about their new position, what they're subject to in that new position, and the ways what they're subject to is justified. There's not so much any active protection - in the sense of like 'your number has come up, but we stopped it' - as there's just an unequal distribution of likelihood of disaster. Being lower on the food chain makes it more likely that disaster will strike (which means that for someone rapidly falling down the side of the pyramid of capitalism due to one disaster will in effect be living out a process where disaster attracts disaster), and like I said there are legitimating ideologies that work to make that basically okay, to cabin off the problem as a local one, merely unfortunate, an issue just for 'you people' and not one other people outside that social location need to concern themselves with.
So, what I think 'vulnerability is disqualifying' gets at is that the vast majority of people have to eat some amount of shit in the social position they're consigned to ("it's the slow decay of the day-to-day that says 'take your paycheck, accept your place and fade away'" https://davehause.bandcamp.com/track/super-powers-enable-me-to-blend-in-with-machinery-2), and is also subject to ideologies that say they deserve it, it's no one else's problem, nothing can be done, etc. It's important to not let the 'disqualifying' lead to the mistaken view that qualification is anything of substance, as if the non-disqualified are protected in some really significant way - as if they have real recourse and support and people in their corner if need be - rather than just being people with a lot better odds where they currently live. The thing is, the system destroys people either quickly or slowly, and it definitely does so much more often and intensely to people in some social positions than others, but people in the positions that have much better odds still don't have as much ability as they think they do to hold disaster at bay if it happens to hit them. They think they're nondisqualified - they're supposed to think that, that's cultivated by institutions, it's an ideological effect - and and that is means they have some kind of shield to fend off awfulness, but when disaster strikes they become disqualified and their apparent shield turns out to have been illusory. I also think the 'this won't happen to people like me' sensibility leads to people second guessing themselves sometimes - 'since this did happen to me when it shouldn't have, did I do something wrong?' kinda thing. This is not at all to say everyone is equally exposed to harm, it's to say that the kind of protection from harm involved in the basic distribution of life chances - ie, less likelihood of certain kinds of adversity, of disaster landing on you - in different social positions is not at all the same thing as capacity to weather that disaster or fend it off if it does strike.