who only by moving can balance

[Content notes: UK politics, disability, gender]

( Read more... )

***
[Content notes: state violence, policing, incarceration, white person discovers racism]

( Read more... )

***
I've had time to read because I am fairly emphatically Taking This Week Off in the Peaks, after three frustrating days on the mass spec last week (resulting in 0 usable data). I am fairly shortly setting off to spend the afternoon at Biddulph Grange Garden; I found it by looking through National Trust properties within striking distance of the cottage we're staying in, and then realised it was ringing a faint bell. I eventually recalled that nanila had been singing its praises remarkably recently, and thus the decision was made.

I have also been playing some more board games; less than I expected but more than zero, with the big obvious progress being that when Our Host expressed doubt over whether I'd get on okay with Avalon I checked in with A, and then pushed to play it anyway. (My side lost! But I did well at my role.) The less-obvious progress is that I'm reaching the point where I'm not spending new-to-me games mostly focussed on managing my anxiety, and consequently am beginning to very tentatively build a model of why People In General enjoy board games. In particular, I'm tentatively beginning to see how people might enjoy them in a way that isn't centred on self-aggrandisement and competitiveness; instead, I think I am beginning to understand the use of games as combination social vehicle and, mmm, experiments in collaboration and problem-solving and exploration: collectively enjoying investigating How This Works, and How It's Different, in a similar fashion to talking about what Interesting And New things a given book is doing.

I'm not certain about this yet! But it still feels like progress to be moving from "panic" to "tentative modelling", and I suspect that once I'm secure enough in my modelling I'll be able to start working out whether I enjoy the games.

So I seriously need to work this out some more, but given that I'm still struggling to make words happen, here's a sketch:

I grew up as a small queer Catholic, who had to be closeted about both the queerness and the Catholicism, and was made very ill indeed by fighting my way clear of love the sinner, hate the sin.

And my sticking point with rehabilitative justice is routinely "okay, but what about the people who know exactly what they're doing and are doing it for fun and are categorically uninterested in stopping?" Of whom I have known... several. And I think at least part of my problem there is my pseudo-allergic response to anything that looks even superficially like love the sinner, hate the sin, where if you're just kind and loving and gentle with people for long enough they will Realise The Error Of Their Ways and that They Were Wrong All Along, because of how toxic and gaslighting that can be.

Which brings me back around again to the thing I've been attempting to write a post about and failing since shortly after my "I am twitchy as fuck about the rhetoric I'm seeing around antifa, here's why" (thank you for your engagement and input on that, various, it was enormously helpful and I haven't stopped thinking about it), in the general vicinity of talking at cross purposes, and I haven't managed to actually pin it down yet but I'm still intending to. But this I can sketch, around ideas-that-turn-toxic and abusers-will-abuse-anything and baby-and-bathwater and examining-my-motivations, so. Here's a sketch.

So as best I can tell, tim has just unfriended me everywhere on the entire Internet because -- I can only assume -- of the post I made yesterday, which disagrees pretty strenuously with his latest post about this twitter thread. I think it forms part of a disturbing pattern of behaviour on his part: I've tried (repeatedly!) expressing concern about his ableism in comments on his posts (as have others), and I've seen similar concerns expressed about his approaches to racism and other areas of oppression. He's point-blank refused to engage, as is of course his absolute right, but I am increasingly scared by how unwilling he seems to be to admit to mistakes or nuance, given ~his position in the feminist community~ and all that shit.

So here's the comment I left on that latest post, which is screened and which I imagine is likely to remain so, because actually I think the content is important.

(I hate that this is, in essence, a "call-out" post? But tim has been very clear that he thinks call-out culture is a good thing, and I have tried -- repeatedly -- to talk to him about this in his space. It has gone nowhere. So: now I'm talking about it in mine. Because I'm scared, and because I think engaging critically with his position statements actually matters, and he seems to be very keen to prevent that. Here we are.)

( Read more... )

Remember last time we did this?

You make things seem more possible.

I will, as ever, be unscreening and making up an index as we go. Please nominate yourselves; please nominate each other; please signal boost.

I see you, and you're not alone.

( Index. )

Status: still open!
Last unscreened: the_quorum

Shut The Fuck Up, Marvel:

"Shut The Fuck Up, Marvel" is a nearly 30k long essay, a spiritual sequel to The Problems With Comics, a deep dive into the true issues with Marvel's economics and business - and how an obsession with short term profit, the constant renumbering and relaunches and events, all compounded by a complete inability to understand basic marketing techniques or outside audiences, has absolutely destroyed the sales stability of many of their former best selling books, all as they condescend to those who criticize them on their stories, or on how they try to sell comics.

Marvel's Secret Empire kicks off by doubling down on Captain America's Nazi past.

... it being the UK release of Guardians of the Galaxy 2.

Exhibit A: Nazi Captain America holding Thor's hammer, with an associated discussion of symbology, senior Marvel staff donations to the 45th US President's campaign, etc

Exhibit B: Marvel asking comic stores to change their logos to Hydra symbols and staff to wear Hydra t-shirts.


Like. Especially maybe don't give them opening-weekend money for this shit, please?

As discussed by rydra_wong, tomorrow afternoon Inclusion London and Disabled People Against The Cuts are hosting a briefing and discussion session regarding the UN finding that the UK government was engaging in grave and systematic violations of the rights of disabled people.

You can use WriteToThem to find, and write to, your MP, in order to draw this session to their attention and urge them to attend. The event details are:

Grave and systematic violations – What next after the UN disability inquiry? Briefing and Discussion
Committee Room 12, Houses of Parliament
2.30 – 3.45pm Tuesday 24th January 2017

My letter specifically pulls my MP up on his comprehensive failure to respond to my previous e-mail to him so will be of limited use, but just in case: ( Read more... )

(If any of you have the cope to adapt this for spoonlessactivists, please by all means go ahead and do so.)

... because I have just made P read it, and then we stayed up til 1am talking about it, and I haven't talked about it here yet because Too Many Feelings, which I will now attempt to sketch.

(Spoilers within!)

( Read more... )

... the time from waking up to the first hate speech directed at me by a Leave voter was three hours.

She was an NHS employee providing me with necessary medical care.

She told me that Leave was a good result for the NHS -- because it can't cope with all the people who don't work, don't contribute, demand scans and MRIs, expect free prescriptions, even expect free paracetamol rather than buying it themselves.

She was cutting a dressing off my hand.

She asked me what I thought.

I thought: every single one of those things you listed describes me. I thought: I have just been told by a medical professional that I don't deserve care. I thought: there is no way I'm telling you you just described me. I thought: I'm terrified.

I'm white. I'm third generation. English isn't my first language but people can't tell unless I tell them and I certainly *sound* posh. I don't look Jewish until you put me in a room with the rest of that side of my family. I can, if necessary, leave the house without a wheelchair.

I pass. This is what I got while passing. I am terrified for the people who can't.

I've put together a petition requesting that government bodies include a non-specific gender-neutral honorific such as Mx in all preset lists of titles. I'll be very grateful if you sign & signal-boost.

The very short explanation is that I think it's ridiculous to have a list that includes "Wing Commander" but not "Mx" (as is the case when using the fill-in-on-a-computer version of the ESA application form).

The slightly longer version is that applying for benefits etc ends up with me being misgendered a lot, which is rather uncomfortable, and last week ended up with me being addressed by my grandmother's name (I am not Mrs B. My mother is not Mrs B. That's... very much my deceased grandmother, thanks.) On top of that, a lot of places -- including banks -- make the (completely spurious) claim that they can't offer Mx as a title because HMRC doesn't: if the government can be persuaded to set an example, a whole lot of other institutions and organisations are suddenly going to have to fall into line.

(Last week I realised, slightly to my astonishment, that I hadn't seen this done; and a trawl of petitions.parliament.uk didn't show anything up. So here we are.)