I'm confused by how these are destructive thoughts. Unappealing, perhaps, and in that sense enough of the right sort of education will teach you not to have the

I'm confused by how these are destructive thoughts. Unappealing, perhaps, and in that sense enough of the right sort of education will teach you not to have these thoughts. But that has no effect on the veracity of the claim. I think the ultimate claim is that if you create a system that can potentially be gamed, people will find whatever way they can to game it. It is possible also that they will game it incorrectly. To cement your suggestion: yes, there are poor women that do this. Making the existence of such actions unspeakable trades solving the problem for perpetuating a socially acceptable lie about it. I don't see how this is better. And the other socially disadvantaged will game systems built for their benefit as well. People don't suddenly grow a heart and a conscience and become flawlessly altruistic because they were a victim of something. It is just a possible they develop the opposite attitude: society screwed then, and now they're going to return the favor. Will they necessarily? No. But I'm not going to give the benefit of the doubt just because they'd claim to be a victim of something. I don't know if they've actually been a victim; they may have foist this upon themselves, in which case I am contributing to massive amounts of moral hazard. They may be down on their luck, but think that the current system we have for dealing with that sucks, because it incentivizes the wrong things and treats them as more of a victim than they think it should. For what it is worth, I am in that latter bucket right now. The entire UI system and such is just so condescendingly paternalistic; I feel like I've suddenly become a grade school student again. They may have been a victim, but we also don't presume that someone was a victim of assault just because they are bruised. We don't hand them whatever entitlement they think we, in due guilt-worthy acquiescent behavior, owe them as penance. And we certainly don't make speaking about the self-inflicted ways one might become bruised taboo. It's just not that simple. You can't assume that everyone who is disadvantaged is a hapless and wholly undeserving victim of horrible circumstances; there's just too much in that assumption that can be wrong, and being wrong means you make the real problems worse.