Oh, Jennie Chancey, you're a disgusting human being

[ladypuglover]

It reminds me of the shirt Denise Huxtable made for Theo on the Cosby Show.

crnPfls0fHw

[GenerationCedarchip]

I'm thinking the US Embassy isn't going to care unless Jennie causes an international incident. They have bigger fish to fry in Kenya and eastern Africa.

In the current climate, if it has even a whiff of exploitation of the citizens of the host country about it, the US Embassy will totally pay attention. I know people who work in various federal agencies, and because of some of the scandals involving military and govt employees lately, the embassies and other federal offices are VERY sensitive about this stuff. If it would embarrass the country to have details of some American's activities abroad get out, they will look at it.

[duplessis3]

Playing titanic is just sick...all those people died and oh ho ho we are going to dress up and have a good laugh while we make believe it is only the people in steerage that will die, so who cares? It is all of a piece with her husband's imperialistic photo, and her imperialism other peoples suffering is fine as long as it pays her way, or amuses her in some way. Doubleplus points if she gets to feel superior while doing it.

[TXDuck]

Good lord. Who knew there were still imperialists bent on making some part of Africa their private fiefdom? Truly disturbing.

[Burris]

Even beyond the fact she's taking advantage of these women, there's this emphasis on how great Chancey believes she is because she taught the women, for free (OMG!), how to cut and sew fabric.

No healthcare. No localized workplace. Probably no tax on her profit.

But she showed her workers to do the work she needed done - FOR FREE - so, hey, golden ticket!

God help us all. These people are so full of themselves I'm surprised they aren't bulging at the seams.

[Elle]

Her profit is NOTHING to her family, but would make a major difference in the lives of those women. But she's clearly hoping for a mass production to happen, which would mean profits richer beyond the wildest dreams of any of those women.

I wish I could contact them and offer them triple what she's paying them to start, using the profit to buy some computers and get electric wiring to their homes (I suspect the Chancey plantation is the only dwelling near them with electricity), then get them set up to own the entire shebang themselves. No personal profit.

The Chanceys are disgusting humans.

[Peas n carrots]

Wow, how truly awful.

I've always been suspect of the various organizations that claim to help the natives with fair pay. Some of my suspicions have been proven correct with these folks.

Did this ever make it on Regretsy? I haven't visited that site in a long while.

[Sola]

I've emailed Helen at Regretsy, linking to this thread and to JC's page on Etsy.

[Guest Anonymous]

Wow, she's a prize fuckwit... well done Elle, and Sola for contacting etsy. I'm goimg to need to read it all through again and then I'll do the same. :)

[pixydust]

Maybe OT, but what the fuck is up with her bangs? God damn, they just always bug the shit out of me. It's this strange combination of thin, greasy-looking and out-of-whack curliness that is just not cute.

Her hair reminds me of mine, and it looks like she isn't useing the correct products. My bangs do that weird curl thing when it is humid, I just have the common sense to pull them back in a headband when it gets bad! I think the greasy-limp look is from using the wrong products to avoid frizz.

BTW, my bangs are looking super cute today! :dance:

[gingernut]

I know a fundie family who did this same deal back in the late 90's in Mexico. They lived in Texas where we did, but they moved down to Mexico, as supposed missionaries. They did help establish a church, like the Chanceys seem to have, and then after awhile they expressed concern that the men in the church had no way to support their family. They "came to the rescue" by building a wood furniture factory and paying church members a "great wage" to make the furniture. Then they hauled the furniture back up to Texas and sold it at flea markets. I don't know the breakdown of what they paid the Mexicans versus what they made at the flea markets but all I know is they had a 3500 square foot home in Texas on 10 acres, and also lived quite well in Mexico. They saw nothing wrong with this. I am telling you, these people, especially dominion types like the family I knew and the Chanceys, think they are doing these people a favor. The way they see it, the local Kenyan's or Mexicans, or whatever, are making more than they would at a sweat shop or from another employer. They, in turn, are exposing these heathen nations to the gospel, and also bringing culture and western civilization to them. (think British imperialism in India, Kenya, etc.) They can then call their business endeavor a "ministry".

[fundifugee]

Kibera is part of Nairobi. It is an enormous slum/shantytown.

I lived on "3 times the minimum wage" (USD$200/month) in Uganda. It was enough to rent a two-room house with no indoor plumbing, no appliances, and intermittent electricity. We hauled water from a communal well 2 kms away and cooked over a charcoal fire. Living conditions were crowded and unsanitary and, frankly, dangerous. We had alittle money left over each month that we saved but had to frequently use up for medical care due to skin infections, diarrheal disease, and malaria.

Sadly, the Chancey's story is not unique. I mentioned on another thread the fact of missionaries "suffering for the Lord" in some "godforsaken land", which is, in fact, a beautiful paradise, already mostly Christian, where the missionaries who make a big show of living on "very little" by Western standards live like petty royalty with servants, gardeners, nannies, big houses in luxurious suburbs, and disposable income left over to shop at malls and go to restaurants that are more expensive than anything they would have afforded in the US. These folks are the rule rather than the exception in the three countries where I have travelled and lived in East Africa, and, to a somewhat lesser extent but still a majority, in the two countries where I have travelled and lived in South America.

While I think the wage that they are paying the women in Kibera, if it is the Nairobi minimum wage, is probably a good wage for the area and the women are probably grateful for the job; the fact of the profit made by the White Overlords is seriously disgusting. It is what turned me off of missionary work while I was still drinking the kool-aid, and development work while I was pursuing my ideals working with non-governmental organizations. The wage differential between foreign and local staff is unjust and prevents the foreign "aid workers" from ever understanding the conditions under which their victims live.

The mental gymnastics required to justify in one's own head that we foreigners deserve to live this quality of life, where equally qualified locals do not, was a cognitive dissonance that I eventually was unable to tolerate. Unfortunately, it still exists in my own life as I keep in contact with friends I lived with then, and continue in an insulated, gluttonous, healthy, comfortable existence while they struggle day-to-day. And yes, I do think my current lifestyle continues to be at their expense; we in the wealthy countries benefit immensely from the cheap labour and ongoing poverty in the 2/3rds world.

Ok this was long enough and I better step off now.

[Elle]

L. Ron Hubbard once said that if you want to make a million dollars, found a religion. People like the Chanceys are making a very quick buck by promoting these things to their religious followers. Ginger, I'm surprised the family you knew wasn't selling the furniture the same way.

Fundifugee, may I share some of what you posted (for far "3 times the minimum wage") really goes, especially before the cost of living jumped so drastically that unions are threatening to strike without a full 60% rise in the minimum wage?? When were you there? Did that $200US have to support a family, or were you supporting yourself? How many wage-earners were in that small apartment? Since Jennie clearly wants her fans to think she's paying a generous salary that is setting those women up to be very very rich, I want to show the reality of how far, or not far, $240, at the absolute best, will stretch, especially since those women are also mothers in a country without any real access to birth control (meaning many children is common).

The blog I set up yesterday is http://thechanceys.wordpress.com/ and so far the only entry is the first entry here toned down a bit. I'll be adding more.

[Sola]

Maybe you could do a post on the debacle which was the Old Spice thingy that her hubby was nominated for (didn't he win?)

Only thing I would suggest though Elle, maybe you ought to blur out her son's face. I know that Jennie herself has posted pics of her son online, but it seems a bit off having him on that pic. Can you crop him out or blur his face?

[Elle]

And yes, I do think my current lifestyle continues to be at their expense; we in the wealthy countries benefit immensely from the cheap labour and ongoing poverty in the 2/3rds world.

American's secret shame is that we have real, true, literally sweatshops here in America, mostly in border cities and as far north as Los Angeles. Many items labeled as "Made in America" are made in these shops that employ mostly illegal immigrant worker and pay them piece-wages that are far below their time. In the southern part of California, Craigslist and other job boards often advertise looking for people to make handbags at $3 per piece, dresses for $5 per piece, and other incredibly low prices for finished items that will take far more time than those wages would pay for at minimum wage. Since many of these workers are not here legally, their recourse is none. What are they going to do, go to the police and be deported? Cramped living conditions, the stereotypical ("10 to a room in America") exist because of how pathetic the wages are. Unsanitary conditions, everything. The "perk" to working in an American sweatshop over living in Nairobi is that our laws mandate ERs to treat people regardless of citizenship or ability to pay. But if you can't afford the follow-up care of medicine, then you're not better off. I toured some of the better hovels and was appalled and nauseated by what I saw. Stuff I never imagined was going on in America. The formal gowns I bought wholesale for their Made in America labels I didn't sell. I couldn't. They were donated to Goodwill instead.

I had an instructor once who defended the purchase of third-world goods with the argument that slave wages was better than nothing at all for those people. I don't think so. What I've observed in America is towns where some people have jobs, even low paying, and many don't, is that the stores and landlords price things for those who have the work, which harms those who can't find jobs. In towns where almost no one works, prices are all much lower. I was a child in a town where fewer than 5% of the adults had jobs, and everything is so cheap a family can get by for under a thousand a month easily. So I think that even slave wages in some of those overseas towns hurts them all.

Also it was nothing more than an attempt to justify enjoying cheap goods at someone else's expense.

I think it's important to try to make due when possible and mend. My husband's jeans have had the crotch mended so many times with patches and whatnot that they finally were held together only with matches, and the edges became too frayed to stay together. He finally got a "new" pair (we thrift), and the old ones will be repurposed into something else, made into rags, or the good fabric. When we do buy new, when at all possible we buy directly from those who make the goods. Until recently, that was on Etsy a lot, though Etsy now openly accepts sellers reselling third-world produced goods if the seller calls herself a collective. I think it's going to be impossible for many to make sure that what they buy never is touched by third-world hands at any point of production (the cost of an item made with wool form sheep grown in America and processed into yarn in America and knitted by hand in America using knitting needles made in America, and there is one such company, is hundreds of dollars for a scarf, and most families just can not afford that).

It's somehow worse that just being mindless about where goods come from when someone claiming to be in a poverty-stricken country to do missionary work, and who is promoted for her work on the missionary website, is training the widows to be her personal workforce making a personal profit she not only doesn't need, but that would be an unfathomable fortune to the women making those items. Jennie is doing this completely on purpose and is witnessing the poverty while her family spends more than a month's wages on a single meal celebrating a tragedy in first-class style to benefit fish.

[Elle]

Maybe you could do a post on the debacle which was the Old Spice thingy that her hubby was nominated for (didn't he win?)

Only thing I would suggest though Elle, maybe you ought to blur out her son's face. I know that Jennie herself has posted pics of her son online, but it seems a bit off having him on that pic. Can you crop him out or blur his face?

I'm planning to do a post on how Matt won because the "forces" were mobilized for him rather than him winning by merit.

Do you know how to use a face-blurring program? I'm clueless. My husband won't be home until later tonight. If someone can do that and post it on photo bucket or something, I'll be glad to replace it. Her 15-year-old son looks so much younger.

[mistyweather]

Looks more like they're playing plantation. :roll:

[DowagerDuchess]

I am a Regency fan and Jane Austen Society active participant member and Jennie Chancey is well known the the Regency community. I have even traveled to Bath with Jennie. My shock is that I knew nothing of her negative side. Nothing. Until joining FJ I had never heard a negative thing about her and I feel so foolish for not seeing it.

Still trying to recover from my shock.

[silvia]

L. Ron Hubbard once said that if you want to make a million dollars, found a religion. People like the Chanceys are making a very quick buck by promoting these things to their religious followers. Ginger, I'm surprised the family you knew wasn't selling the furniture the same way.

Fundifugee, may I share some of what you posted (for far "3 times the minimum wage") really goes, especially before the cost of living jumped so drastically that unions are threatening to strike without a full 60% rise in the minimum wage?? When were you there? Did that $200US have to support a family, or were you supporting yourself? How many wage-earners were in that small apartment? Since Jennie clearly wants her fans to think she's paying a generous salary that is setting those women up to be very very rich, I want to show the reality of how far, or not far, $240, at the absolute best, will stretch, especially since those women are also mothers in a country without any real access to birth control (meaning many children is common).

The blog I set up yesterday is http://thechanceys.wordpress.com/ and so far the only entry is the first entry here toned down a bit. I'll be adding more.

Yes, I'd be curious to get a more detailed breakdown of just how far that $240 would stretch. What do food, clothing, utilities, and a decent place to live cost in Kenya? What if Jennie were paying these women, say, $500 a month--would that go a lot further?

[No Fun My Babe]

I'm planning to do a post on how Matt won because the "forces" were mobilized for him rather than him winning by merit.

Do you know how to use a face-blurring program? I'm clueless. My husband won't be home until later tonight. If someone can do that and post it on photo bucket or something, I'll be glad to replace it. Her 15-year-old son looks so much younger.

http://i260.photobucket.com/albums/ii24 ... hancey.jpg

[fundifugee]

L. Ron Hubbard once said that if you want to make a million dollars, found a religion. People like the Chanceys are making a very quick buck by promoting these things to their religious followers. Ginger, I'm surprised the family you knew wasn't selling the furniture the same way.

Fundifugee, may I share some of what you posted (for far "3 times the minimum wage") really goes, especially before the cost of living jumped so drastically that unions are threatening to strike without a full 60% rise in the minimum wage?? When were you there? Did that $200US have to support a family, or were you supporting yourself? How many wage-earners were in that small apartment? Since Jennie clearly wants her fans to think she's paying a generous salary that is setting those women up to be very very rich, I want to show the reality of how far, or not far, $240, at the absolute best, will stretch, especially since those women are also mothers in a country without any real access to birth control (meaning many children is common).

The blog I set up yesterday is http://thechanceys.wordpress.com/ and so far the only entry is the first entry here toned down a bit. I'll be adding more.

Yes, I was in Uganda, living mostly in Kampala from 1998-1999. There were two wage earners in our household, and since we were considered relatively well off by comparison to the rest of the people (at least we had jobs), we always ended up with friends, relatives, or their kids staying with us (my partner at the time was Ugandan). The number of people staying in our two room house (NOT two bedroom, just two rooms) ranged from 3-11 at any given time during those two years. Often family members would send us their kids while they were on school holidays, then after a few days the children would announce that they were unable to return to school for lack of school fees, and ask us to 'sponsor' them. (of course, because I was a foreigner everyone thought I was getting foreigner wages although it had been my goal to find out what it was like to live like an average Ugandan. Folks never understood that. We paid the school fees when we could but they never believed me when I said we didn't have the money).

It was quite a rude awakening for me, as I had just finished a contract with an NGO where I, as a recent university grad, was making about $1,000 a month, and my Rwandese counterpart, who had a degree plus over ten years of experience, was making $200. I was told by my superiors that it was the going wage for his job, and that westerners get overcharged for everything but Rwandese knew how to live on that little and that was an excellent wage for a Rwandan. I got to know my counterpart quite well in the course of six months, and in my final month of work he invited me to his home to meet his family. He lived with his wife and their five children, as well as six of his nieces and nephews who had been orphaned by the genocide. I was shocked that his salary, combined with his generosity and responsibility for his own family, resulted in him only able to afford a two-room shack made of mud, a long walk from the nearest well, with no electricity, cooking outside over a fire. That was when I decided I wanted to find out how folks really lived outside the walls of the enclosed NGO "compounds". I took off to Uganda with my boyfriend once my NGO contract was over. It was a huge learning experience.

[Elle]

I am a Regency fan and Jane Austen Society active participant member and Jennie Chancey is well known the the Regency community. I have even traveled to Bath with Jennie. My shock is that I knew nothing of her negative side. Nothing. Until joining FJ I had never heard a negative thing about her and I feel so foolish for not seeing it.

Still trying to recover from my shock.

I'm a member of one of the largest regency societies in the US, and we've got members claiming affiliation from as far away as Australia, members of her own forum, who it seems know better than to try to defend her because I am personally well-known to the board of the society and am friends with them, and am an active, in-person member. I told them about what Jennie really stands for, and let's just say that it's spreading and pretty much no one will buy her patterns anymore. Contrary to what Jennie and her sycophants want to think, a lot of people who enjoy regency reenactments aren't fundy Christians. We've got lesbians, single moms, women with unnaturally colored hair (thanks to dye), a lot of us are atheists, basically the sort of people Jennie would say are hell bound. Oh, and it's not a big deal when someone's son wants to dress up in a lacy dress or a girl wants to crop her hair short and wear jeans. We accept the children of our members as they are. One of her forum pets lives local to me, and would't join the society, or even respond to the invitation, even though she loves this sort of thing.

Jennie, and people like her, are aware of their less-than-acceptable beliefs and play it like politicians, keeping those controversial bits quiet and using others to spread the word about it. Jennie is a deplorable human being. Don't feel foolish. She has pulled the wool over many people's eyes. I also once thought she was great, until she started Ladies Against Feminism (I was one of the first members of the forum that was there and is no longer there, though there's some rumor that there's a secret forum still), and it confused me that she was actually against things like women having the right to vote and how it was wrong for a woman to change a headlight in the car because I actually had just done that (I posted on the LAF forum asking what a woman should do if there was no husband home and the headlight needed to be replaced and she knew how, and answers ranged form asking a neighbor man to calling her pastor for help). I was banned from the forum in the end because my "non-submissive ways" were a threat to the "impressionable" ladies there. Changing a headlight in the car. Bad.

Prior to that was a long post about how she had apprentices help design and draft the patterns, and how wonderful it was that she was giving these girls a chance to live with her family and do that. No one else has even been credited with designing or drafting the patterns aside from the Young Designers Contest winners. Let's just say that the work those apprentices was doing amounted to them doing most of the work. It's another part of why I can't stomach buying her patterns. Most of them were designed and drafted mostly by ghost-drafters who would live with her family and work for free. Yes, people actually sent their daughters to live with Jennie for a while as unpaid apprentices. I wish I had known about screen capping back in those days (around 2003, 2004), and had capped and saved this stuff. It's mind-blowing.

She used to post as Mrs. Matthew Chancey, which helped conceal her a bit because there would be many women with the same last name, and you'd have to know the names of their husbands to know which Mrs. Chancey it is.

[Elle]

Thanks, No Fun My Babe. Blog post updated with that photo.

[Sola]

I'm planning to do a post on how Matt won because the "forces" were mobilized for him rather than him winning by merit.

Do you know how to use a face-blurring program? I'm clueless. My husband won't be home until later tonight. If someone can do that and post it on photo bucket or something, I'll be glad to replace it. Her 15-year-old son looks so much younger.

I'll have a go if you want. If I manage to work out my editing software I'll upload to my photobucket and then send you the link.

Edit: nevermind, someone has done it for you :D

[Elle]

Yes, I'd be curious to get a more detailed breakdown of just how far that $240 would stretch. What do food, clothing, utilities, and a decent place to live cost in Kenya? What if Jennie were paying these women, say, $500 a month--would that go a lot further?

I've looked for a breakdown of living expenses, and haven't found any that apply outside of big cities, where $240 doesn't buy much. As fundifugee can attest though, $200 didn't stretch far enough 22-23 years ago. More than two decades of inflation later...