a photo in Palestine during the sunset with text overlapping - "This international day of persons with disabilities, please remember that wars are mass disabling events." // Under the text is a digital sketch drawing by Kalyn Heffernan of Ibrahim Abu Thurayeh on the front lines in Gaza. Holding high a peace sign and the Palestinian flag in a wheelchair as a double amputee with no legs. Shot and killed by Israeli soldiers at 29 yrs old after being shot losing both his legs for protesting.

Disability in Gaza

I published this on Dec 3, 2023, on my Substack newsletter.

Today is the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, a day set aside in 1992 by the United Nations to discuss the rights of disabled people. In 2006, they put out the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities — a document that requires countries to take care of and pay attention to how their disabled citizens are living in addition to other requirements.

Israel signed onto the Convention in 2007, ratifying it in 2012. Their status as occupiers in Palestine means this applies to Palestinians, too, and that Israel is responsible for ensuring the 50,000 (and growing) disabled Palestinians have all of their rights and are safe.

And yet, if that was the case, this specific newsletter wouldn’t exist.

So, let’s talk about disability in Gaza.

“The Israeli military’s major ground offensive in Gaza adds immeasurably to the serious difficulties for people with disabilities to flee, find shelter, and obtain water, food, medicine, and assistive devices they desperately need,” said Emina Ćerimović, the senior disability rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The United States and other Israeli allies should press Israel to take all necessary steps to protect people with disabilities and lift the blockade.”

People in Gaza lack wheelchairs, prosthetics, crutches, hearing aids, and other assistive devices — a result of the 16-year long blockade.

Even if you do have a wheelchair, how do you navigate areas of mass bombing? Once you find a safer space to exist in, how long will it be until you’re forced to move again?

How do you try to move in a world that is now even more inaccessible to you than before?

All of this, among other reasons, is why a report earlier this year found that Israel was violating the rights of disabled Palestinians.

Deaf folks cannot hear the airstrikes.

Blind folks cannot navigate the rubble or new areas easily on their own.

The hospitals, schools, and other spaces that people may previously have sheltered in are inaccessible, overfull, or being destroyed despite the destruction being a violation of international humanitarian law.

Without access to electricity and the internet, some assistive devices like CPAP machines or augmented communication devices aren’t even able to function.

Others cannot communicate with the people who can help them the most, with their cell phones out of battery or unable to connect to the internet.

And none of this even begins to approach the issue of a lack of access to regular medical care for cancer, kidney disease, and more — or how the lack of UNWRA staff and supplies means many people, like Al Madhoun, are going without medication that they need to live.

Madhoun, a 39-year-old woman, cannot access medication for high blood pressure or diabetes: “Usually, I get the medication from UNRWA, but there is no organization on the ground right now giving out medication.”

Do you know how easy it is to die without access to diabetes medication? Absurdly so.

Madhoun also shared that she doesn’t “have people here whom I know, I cannot access water or food and I don’t feel safe.”

Not to mention how disease is running through the area rampantly. An upper respiratory infection that sound a lot like COVID-19 is among them. Bisan Owda, a 24-year old filmmaker, is just one person who is incredibly ill and struggling with their health. She is also one of the few people who has done the most to share about what’s going on every day in Gaza who is still alive.

Some of the URI-like symptoms could also be from the toxic materials used in building construction that have been vaporized and breathed in by folks of all ages. We know these materials cause a ton of health issues, including lung disease and cancer, because of September 11th, 2001.

The lack of access to food, water, proper toilets, disease-free zones, and more is all leading to a high death toll for Palestinians — and especially disabled Palestinians.

One statistic that’s been heavily shared is that half of Gazans are children. This is true, but have you stopped to consider why? Jesse does, in this piece on what disability justice means in Gaza.

And, as Alice Wong highlights in her recent piece “Why Palestinian Liberation Is Disability Justice

I’m no expert but I know what it means to be dehumanized, rendered disposable, and oppressed. I know that all people deserve freedom. I know that genocide is a mass disabling event and a form of eugenics.

All of this is not new, but may be new to some of you. And that’s okay.

But, as a sign of how not-new it is, consider that for some this is their fifth war — and they’re not even that old.

This siege hasn’t been just 55+ days. It’s been decades of increasingly horrific actions.

And it has to stop.

So, this International Day of People with Disabilities, please consider the ways disabled people are being actively harmed around you — and what you can do to stop it.

How You Can Take Action

Resources + Further Learning

If there are additional topics that you’d like to learn specifically about RE Palestine and/or disability, please reach out! I’m happy to recommend links, books, or whatever feels most accessible to help.

Ableism, Willowbrook, and The Pandemic

Content notes: forced institution of disabled folks, multiple uses of the R slur, neglect, abuse (including sexual), death

ableism, willowbrook, and the pandemic

This week, I learned that Martin Luther King, Jr., dealt with depression beginning in childhood. This ties directly into one of my daily threads this week:

tweet from Grayson: Whoo, y'all, the ableism here. AND also the racism in focusing on calling this man out while letting the comments of the millions of white politicians and pundits who do this shit daily slip by quietly. #GiveUsThisDayOurDailyThread - Quote Tweet of César N. Chávez @CesarChavezAZ · Jan 23 Allowing severely mentally ill and drug addicted individuals to roam public places unsupervised is inhumane. In my district, this has become a problem. During the past months, I’ve been working with stakeholders to brainstorm several ideas. These ideas will be introduced soon.
link

As an aside, I have a meeting on Tuesday with Rep. Chávez to talk through how and why this was harmful. Instead of dunking on a queer formerly undocumented immigrant serving as an Arizona state representative, I offered to talk. So, please don’t use this tweet to throw hate his way – especially if you’re white.

Most people do not know the history of institutionalization, why it was so bad, or how hard the disability community had to fight to get it to end – and even now, institutions still exist. They believe that mental illness is something that you can see, something that is clear and can lead someone to violence.

The reality is, though, that people with mental health issues account for maybe 3-5% of violence:

only 3%–5% of violent acts can be attributed to individuals living with a serious mental illness. In fact, people with severe mental illnesses are over 10 times more likely to be victims of violent crime than the general population.

I go on in that thread to talk about how the media fails us with shitty representation of mental illness, physical disability, and more. They make us out to be monsters, fueling the fire for ableism.

 

Willowbrook

One of the best ways to illustrate how institutions do not ever need to come back is by talking about Willowbrook State School in Staten Island. As we do, though, note that this situation is far from unique to that specific institution – other former institutions have even acknowledged that.

Continue reading “Ableism, Willowbrook, and The Pandemic”

My Favorite Things in 2021

my favorite things in 2021

Every year, I try to write up something about all of the things I did throughout the year. It’s always been a great way for me to reflect and sit with the fact that I do actually do a ton of stuff, even when I don’t feel like that’s true. While that post goes on my other site, I wanted to try something new here and highlight my favorite things of 2021.

 

Music

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m constantly singing, humming, dancing, etc. It’s part of why I’ve done burlesque. Here’s a list of songs I listened to a lot this year:

 

 

Other Favorites

I will admit that I don't always have as much time - or the attention span - for reading as I'd like. Since this is the first year I'm doing this, these are books I've read in the last few years that I've adored.

  • A Disability History of the United States by Kim E Nielsen
  • Alif The Unseen by Wilson G. Willow
  • Building Open Relationships: Your hands-on guide to swinging, polyamory, and beyond! by Dr. Liz Powell
  • Conquer Me: Girl-to-Girl Wisdom About Fulfilling Your Submissive Desires by Kacie Cunningham
  • Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability by Robert McRuer
  • Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace by Miroslav Volf
  • How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
  • Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankel
  • Rewriting the Rules: An Integrative Guide to Love, Sex and Relationships by Meg-John Barker
  • Sex-Interrupted: Igniting Intimacy While Living With Illness or Disability by Iris Zink NP and Jenny Palter (featuring yours truly as an appendix writer)
  • Sophie’s World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy by Jostein Gaarder
  • The Body Is Not An Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love by Sonya Renee Taylor
  • The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
  • The President is a Sick Man: Wherein the Supposedly Virtuous Grover Cleveland Survives a Secret Surgery At Sea and Vilifies the Courageous Newspaperman Who Dared Expose the Truth by Matthew Algeo

  • Crip Kinship by Shayda Kafai
  • Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw
  • The Care We Dream of, edited by Zena Sharman
  • The Transgender Issue by Shon Faye
  • We Do This 'Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice by Mariame Kaba
  • What Fresh Hell Is This? by Heather Corinna

Like the above, these are works that impacted me this year.

 

Feel free to share your favorites in the comments!

In Celebration of bell hooks

in celebration of bell hooks - “Love empowers us to live fully and die well. Death becomes, then, not an end to life but a part of living.”

bell hooks died this week. She was a noted author, professor, activist, and mind changer.

Born in Kentucky in 1952, Gloria Jean Watkins attended Stanford, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the University of California-Santa Cruz. She took on her pen name after her grandmother Bell Blair Hooks.

Many people wonder why hooks is always spelled in the lowercase. When asked about this, she said:

“When the feminist movement was at its zenith in the late ‘60s and early ’70s, there was a lot of moving away from the idea of the person. It was: let’s talk about the ideas behind the work, and the people matter less… It was kind of a gimmicky thing, but lots of feminist women were doing it.”

So, if you see people capitalizing her pen name, remind them that isn’t what she wanted.

 

Who bell Was to Me

I hate to say that I only recently began to dig more into bell’s work. This week, while working, I’ve been listening to conversations and her work, though.

Through listening to bell, I’ve found so many of my own viewpoints validated and affirmed. Before, I often felt like I was alone and without as much community in the way I view love, justice, and how we throw off oppression. One of the videos that I share below is her and Cornel West talking. I wouldn’t have ever said that my politics aligned with hooks and West on my own accord, especially as a white person. That said, I found my people in that video, in their work.

I wish that I had been in a space to dig into this work sooner. That said, I’m so glad that I’m finally here.

 

Articles About bell

 

Read bell’s Works

Since so many of these links are PDFs, I’ve marked those that are not with an asterisk (*).

 

My Favorite bell hooks Quotes

On Love
  • “A generous heart is always open, always ready to receive our going and coming. In the midst of such love we need never fear abandonment. This is the most precious gift true love offers – the experience of knowing we always belong.”
  • “Love is an action, never simply a feeling.”
  • “To think of actions shaping feelings is one way we rid ourselves of conventionally accepted assumptions… If we were constantly remembering that love is as love does, we would not use the word in a manner that devalues and degrades its meaning.”
  • “But many of us seek community solely to escape the fear of being alone. Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.”
  • “Since loving is about knowing, we have more meaningful love relationships when we know each other and it takes time to know each other.”
  • “Everywhere we learn that love is important, and yet we are bombarded by its failure….We still believe in love’s promise.”
  • “The moment we choose to love we begin to move against domination, against oppression. The moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others.”
  • “To be loving is to be open to grief. to be touched by sorrow, even sorrow that is unending. we need not contain grief when we use it as a means to intensify our love for the dead and dying, for those who remain alive.”
  • “Love empowers us to live fully and die well. Death becomes, then, not an end to life but a part of living.”
  • “To love well is the task in all meaningful relationships, not just romantic bonds.”
  • “Love is a combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect and trust.”
  • “The wounded heart learns self-love by first overcoming low self-esteem.”
  • “Choosing to be honest is the first step in the process of love. There is no practitioner of love who deceives. Once the choice has been made to be honest, then the next step on love’s path is communication.”
  • “Genuine love is rarely an emotional space where needs are instantly gratified. To know love we have to invest time and commitment…’dreaming that love will save us, solve all our problems or provide a steady state of bliss or security only keeps us stuck in wishful fantasy, undermining the real power of the love — which is to transform us.’ Many people want love to function like a drug, giving them an immediate and sustained high. They want to do nothing, just passively receive the good feeling.”
  • “Schools for love do not exist. Everyone assumes that we will know how to love instinctively. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, we still accept that the family is the primary school for love. Those of us who do not learn how to love among family are expected to experience love in romantic relationships. However, this love often eludes us.”
  • “The practice of love offers no place of safety. We risk loss, hurt, pain. We risk being acted upon by forces outside our control.”
  • “If only one party in the relationship is working to create love, to create the space of emotional connection, the dominator model remains in place and the relationship just becomes a site for continuous power struggle.”
  • “The practice of love is the most powerful antidote to the politics of domination.”
  • “One of the best guides to how to be self-loving is to give ourselves the love we are often dreaming about receiving from others. There was a time when I felt lousy about my over-forty body, saw myself as too fat, too this, or too that. Yet I fantasized about finding a lover who would give me the gift of being loved as I am. It is silly, isn’t it, that I would dream of someone else offering to me the acceptance and affirmation I was withholding from myself. This was a moment when the maxim ‘You can never love anybody if you are unable to love yourself’ made clear sense. And I add, ‘Do not expect to receive the love from someone else you do not give yourself.’ “
  • “In an ideal world we would all learn in childhood to love ourselves. We would grow, being secure in our worth and value, spreading love wherever we went, letting our light shine. If we did not learn self-love in our youth, there is still hope. The light of love is always in us, no matter how cold the flame. It is always present, waiting for the spark to ignite, waiting for the heart to awaken and call us back to the first memory of being the life force inside a dark place waiting to be born – waiting to see the light.”
  • “When we face pain in relationships our first response is often to sever bonds rather than to maintain commitment.”
  • “Fundamentally, to begin the practice of love we must slow down and be still enough to bear witness in the present moment. If we accept that love is a combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and trust, we can then be guided by this understanding. We can use these skillful means as a map in our daily life to determine right action.”
  • “When we commit to love in our daily life, habits are shattered. We are necessarily working to end domination. Because we no longer are playing by the safe rules of the status quo, rules that if we obey guarantee us a specific outcome, love moves us to a new ground of being. This movement is what most people fear.”
  • “Before I die in this world I want to have a sense of what it is to love and be loved… many of us coming out of abusive settings have not had that. We don’t know what that looks like – and that’s the other thing. Sometimes you have to find out what something looks like and then you have to grieve that you don’t have it. And you may be getting old and you don’t have it. So you have to figure out, what is enough within that?”
  • “What does it mean to value a friend as you would value a partner? And that is again I think totally counter hegemonic because everything in our culture is constantly telling us that the partner is everything – finding the partner. And so not finding love but finding a partner. And, especially Black women, that’s when we get hooked up with so many people who treat us cruelly, abusively – because we’re trying to find a partner. We’re trying to validate that I’m worth something because I have found somebody and not that I am hoping to love. And then having to grieve when that love doesn’t come…”
  • “To me, all the work I do is built on a foundation of loving-kindness. Love illuminates matters.”
  • “Queer not as being about who you are having sex with, that can be a dimension of it, but queer as being about the self that is at odds with everything around it and has to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live.”

 

On Justice
  • “There are times when we have to stand for justice. And there are times when, in standing for justice, we have to turn away from people that we would ordinarily maybe want to be with. And that is a difficult part of struggle.”
  • “Rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation. Healing is an act of communion.”
  • “To build community requires vigilant awareness of the work we must continually do to undermine all the socialization that leads us to behave in ways that perpetuate domination.”
  • “When we drop fear, we can draw nearer to people, we can draw nearer to the earth, we can draw nearer to all the heavenly creatures that surround us.”
  • “Sometimes people try to destroy you, precisely because they recognize your power — not because they don’t see it, but because they see it and they don’t want it to exist.”
  • “Only grown-ups think that the things children say come out of nowhere. We know they come from the deepest parts of ourselves.”
  • “What we do is more important than what we say or what we say we believe.”
  • “True resistance begins with people confronting pain…and wanting to do something to change it.”
  • “For me, forgiveness and compassion are always linked: how do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed?”
  • “Definitions are vital starting points for the imagination. What we cannot imagine cannot come into being. A good definition marks our starting point and lets us know where we want to end up.”
  • “Dominator culture has tried to keep us all afraid, to make us choose safety instead of risk, sameness instead of diversity. Moving through that fear, finding out what connects us, reveling in our differences; this is the process that brings us closer, that gives us a world of shared values, of meaningful community.”
  • “All our silences in the face of racist assault are acts of complicity.”
  • “We can’t combat white supremacy unless we can teach people to love justice. You have to love justice more than your allegiance to your race, sexuality and gender. It is about justice.”
  • “The first act of violence that patriarchy demands of males is not violence toward women. Instead patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves. If an individual is not successful in emotionally crippling himself, he can count on patriarchal men to enact rituals of power that will assault his self-esteem.”
  • “If I do not speak in a language that can be understood there is little chance for a dialogue.”
  • “Most folks don’t seem to want to believe that one can be struggling for justice and into nuanced cultural perspectives, aesthetics, and the vernacular at the same time.”
  • “It takes courage and critical vigilance not to conform. It takes knowing the rules of the game, how to play and win, as well as finding strategies to win without compromising in ways that violate or destroy the integrity of your being.”

 

On Writing and Her Work

  • “When I sit down to write I do not imagine my pen will be guided by anything other than the strength of my will, imagination and intellect. When the spirit moves into that writing, shaping its direction, that is for me a moment of pure mystery. It is a visitation of the sacred that I cannot call forth at will. I can only hope that it will come. This hope is grounded in my own experience that those moments when I feel my imagination and the words I put together to be touched by the presence of divine spirit, my writing is transformed.”
  • “Words have the power to heal wounds. Out of the mysterious place where words first come to be ‘made flesh’—that place which is all holiness—I am given the grace to work with words in a spirit of right livelihood which calls me to peace, reflection, and connectedness with communities of readers whom I may never know or see. Writing becomes then a way to embrace the mysterious, to walk with spirits, and an entry into the realm of the sacred.”
  • “Writing has been for me one of the ways to encounter the divine. As a discipline of mind and heart, working with words has become a spiritual practice.”
  • “I write with intensity, discipline and constancy, because this is the work that calls me—the vocation of my heart. The writing I do is always meant to serve as critical intervention, as resistance. Balancing the desire to have work meaningfully touch relevant issues without, as well as always reflect artistic expression and integrity within, is not an easy task. While much of my cultural criticism challenges representations that reinforce existing structures of domination, it also offers new and different representations. The work then is always part of our struggle for liberation.”

 

Watch bell Speak

 

 

 

 

 

 

Avoid the Red Bucket But Not The Salvation Army as a Whole

Content note: mentions of anti-LGBTQ+ attitudes from the Salvation Army as well as abuse with details in links

Avoid the Red Bucket But Not The Salvation Army as a Whole

Now that folks know the history around the Salvation Army being anti-LGBTQ+, many are requesting an all-out boycott. I used to be one of those folks.

It can be hard not to be with the wild stories of exclusion and discrimination.

However, completely ditching SA is problematic, too – and not just because individual chapters can be incredibly LGBTQ+ affirming and friendly.

Who are you and what did you do with Grayson?

I’m still me, I promise! I’m just covered in more hair. I’ve done some growth and gotten more comfortable with gray areas. On top of that, I’ve also learned a lot more about justice and worked to unpack a lot of binary thinking. Don’t worry – the blacklist still exists. It just also includes a caution section, where SA now lives.

Here’s the issue: mainstream LGBTQ+ culture contains a lot of exclusionary thinking, especially classism and location privilege. The ideas of yeeting an organization and shaming those who need to use it are rooted in those ideals. Some think that people can just get help from another organization, that more organizations exist that are LGBTQ+ friendly in every space. The reality is that, in many rural places, the options for our community accessing assistance are slim.

Organizations like the Salvation Army and Goodwill may be the only options many people have.

I recently moved to Ohio, to one of the Appalachian counties. There are very few options for seeking help or second-hand goods, especially with how many people are struggling financially due to the pandemic. Around 20% of the LGBTQ+ community lives in rural areas, so this isn’t a small number.

“Well, Grayson, what should we do then?”

For starters, we can try to not shit all over people who need to access services via SA, Goodwill, or other majorly problematic organizations.

When we use shame to tell folks that helping the Salvation Army harms queer and trans folks, we’re also overlooking those that they help. In fact, using shame can cause lasting emotional harm. We know that shunning and shaming people doesn’t work to bring about change.

The only way I’d entertain this idea of talking down these organizations around those who needed assistance is if you’re willing to personally help pay for goods and services or organize a mutual aid effort.

Would I give money to the Salvation Army?

No. Among other issues, we can’t control where that money might go. It isn’t tracked the same way as other non-profits because it’s a religious organization.

Living in Appalachia now, though, I would absolutely take items to their donation centers. I might not be able to ensure that the Salvation Army treats everyone seeking help from them well. What I can do is make sure that there are be LGBTQ+ friendly options for clothing, books, etc.

This is hard!

I know. Our brains don’t like nuance. We want to see things in black and white, good and evil. The reality is that the world is infinitely complicated.

Something that can help is Meg-John Barker’s idea of the plural self. One of the ways I often explain this to folks is loathing someone like R. Kelly for the harm that he’s caused… and then also having a part of you that gets jazzed to hear the remix to Ignition for the first five seconds.

Someone pointing out that things aren’t that way might take a while to set in. It did for me. I’ll be forever grateful to my friends Paige Lauren and Remy Orcutt for helping me break out of this way of thinking.

All I ask for and hope is that we can start thinking through these things critically – especially for those of you who love to use the word ‘intersectional’ in your bios.

Looking for Organizations to Donate to?

2021 Care Rationing Survey

2021 Care Rationing Survey - #NoBodyIsDispoable Fat Legal Advocacy, Rights, & Education Project - Have you struggled with or delayed getting medical care during the pandemic? Are you a provider concerned about care rationing at your organization? Please take this survey.

The #NoBodyIsDisposable Coalition and the Fat Legal Advocacy, Rights, & Education Project have created a short survey to hear from people who are being denied medical care because of limited medical resources. Responses will be used to help advocate for fair medical treatment.

This survey was created to help gather the stories of folks who are having trouble getting medical care during COVID. Stories will be shared to create awareness and support advocacy. (Respondents can choose whether or not to share anonymously.)

Who should take the survey?

Please take the survey if you or someone you know had a hard time getting medical treatment during COVID due to limited medical personnel and supplies/equipment shortages and you suspect part or all of the reason you did not receive necessary care was based on discrimination including but not limited to your weight, disability, race, age, or other factors.

Take the survey if you have been delaying necessary medical care because you worry if you do get COVID that you will be deprioritized for life-saving medical treatment based on your weight, disability, race, age, or other factors.

Take the survey if you work at a health care organization and have concerns about the care rationing policy, or how it is implemented.

Link to the Survey

The survey is available in English and Spanish.

Please help spread the word. They will be reviewing answers on an ongoing basis.

Transmisia! At The Netflix

transmisia at the netflix

Last week, Netflix fired the one trans Black person they employ.

Yes, one.

This comes after they suspended – then reinstatedTerra Field, a trans woman who wrote a viral (and brilliant) Twitter thread about Chappelle’s The Closer.

Netflix claims to have done so because Field and others attended a director-level meeting they were not invited to. Per Vox:

The tweet thread went viral, quickly spiraling into a conversation about free speech and cancel culture. Netflix then suspended Field along with two other employees for trying to attend a director-level meeting they weren’t invited to. Another trans employee is quitting the company over how the special — and Field’s comments — were handled.

Wait, what?

If you’ve been hiding under a rock, I wouldn’t blame you. They do look rather cozy and far safer than a lot of spaces right now.

Patrick Star on his house under a rock
(source)

Dave Chappelle came out with a new special. Like most of his work, he leaned real hard into the transmisia. I’m gonna post some of the things he said below. It’ll be safe when the next picture pops up if you want to skip. You can catch up on more of the situation here and read trans comedians reacting here.

On gender:

Gender is a fact. Every human being in this room, every human being on earth, had to pass through the legs of a woman to be on earth. That is a fact. Now, I am not saying that to say trans women aren’t women, I am just saying that those pussies that they got… you know what I mean? I’m not saying it’s not pussy, but it’s Beyond Pussy or Impossible Pussy. It tastes like pussy, but that’s not quite what it is, is it? That’s not blood. That’s beet juice.

On JK Rowling:

Effectually, she said gender was a fact, the trans community got mad as shit, they started calling her a TERF. I didn’t even know what the fuck that was, but I know that trans people make up words to win arguments…This is a real thing. This is a group of women that hate transgender woman–they don’t hate transgender women, but they look at trans women the way we Blacks might look at blackface. It offends them. Like ‘Ugh, this bitch is doing an impression of me.’

On TERFdom:

I’m team TERF!

After sharing about Daphne Dorman’s situation:

until we are both sure that we are laughing together. I’m telling you, it’s done. I’m done talking about it. All I ask of your community, with all humility: Will you please stop punching down on my people.

I’m not the person to speak on this in-depth. However, I want to note that Chappelle also stated in the special that his issue is with white people. Fair! But then he goes on to equate all trans folks and other LGB+ folks with whiteness, ignoring that Black trans folks – especially women – are the ones who face the most violence from cishet men. Instead of listening to me, read the below from the National Black Justice Coalition:

Make no mistake: Black LGBTQ+ and same gender people exist – and have always existed. The fight against oppression is not a zero sum game, and the pervasiveness of white supremacy in the United States is not an excuse for homophobia or transphobia.

It’s important to note that queermisia and transmisia both are rooted in White Supremacy and colonialism. Embracing them to attack racism seems a little like a notable Chappelle Show sketch. It doesn’t work, as you’re propping up one side of the system to dismantle the other. If this were a tent, you’d never be able to take it down.

a tent being pitched with broken poles

What’s Ted said?

The CEO Ted Sarandos backtracked from earlier statements, but not as much as he should have.

After denying that boosting anti-trans voices causes violence, Sarandos said “To be clear, storytelling has an impact in the real world…sometimes quite negative.” There are no plans to remove the special from Netflix, he shared:

We have articulated to our employees that there are going to be things you don’t like. There are going to be things that you might feel are harmful. But we are trying to entertain a world with varying tastes and varying sensibilities and various beliefs, and I think this special was consistent with that… sometimes inclusion and artistic expression bump into each other.

Things we don’t like is not a synonymous phrase for things that incite violence and prop up stereotypes against trans folks, Ted.

What Employees Want

Trans workers quickly began planning another walkout for today, October 20. Earlier this week, the trans employee resource group shared their list of demands, which I’m also sharing below. If you’d like to enjoy the song that went through my head as I read this, open this YouTube video in another tab.

Over the past few weeks, it has become clear that there are many places where Netflix still has to grow when it comes to content relating to the trans and non-binary community. The Trans* Employee Resource Group, which includes trans and non-binary colleagues as well as our numerous allies, wants Netflix to immediately take the steps below to begin to repair the relationship between the Company, our colleagues, and our audience.

Specifically, we want the Company to adopt measures in the areas of Content Investment, Employee Relations and Safety, and Harm Reduction, all of which are necessary to avoid future instances of platforming transphobia and hate speech, and to account for the harm we have caused and will continue to cause until the below measures are put in place.

Content Investment

Create a new fund to specifically develop trans and non-binary talent
○ This fund should support both above-the-line (ATL) and below-the-line (BTL) talent;
○ This fund should exist in addition to the existing Creative Equity Fund;

Increase investment in trans and non-binary content on Netflix comparable to our total investment in transphobic content, including marketing and promotion;

Invest in multiple trans creators to make both scripted and unscripted programs across genres;

Revise internal processes on commissioning and releasing potential harmful (“sensitive”) content, including but not limited to involving parties who are a part of the subject community and can speak to potential harm, or consulting with 3rd party experts/vendors;

Increase the ERG role in conversations around potentially harmful content and ensure we have best in class regional support on complicated intersectional diversity issues;

Hire trans and non-binary content executives, especially BIPOC, in leading positions;

Employee Relations and Safety

Recruit trans people, especially BIPOC, for leadership roles in the company (Director, VP, etc.) and promote an inclusive environment for them;

Allow employees to remove themselves from previous company promotional content (e.g. allyship and diversity videos, etc.);

Eliminate references/imagery of transphobic titles or talent inside of the workplace, including but not limited to murals, posters, room names, swag;

Harm Reduction

Acknowledge the harm and Netflix’s responsibility for this harm from transphobic content, and in particular harm to the Black trans community;

Add a disclaimer before transphobic titles that specifically flag transphobic language, misogyny, homophobia, hate speech, etc. as required;

Boost promotion for Disclosure and other trans-affirming titles in the platform;

Suggest trans-affirming content alongside and after content flagged as anti-trans.

We are employees, but we are members, too. We believe that this Company can and must do better in our quest to entertain the world, and that the way forward must include more diverse voices in order to avoid causing more harm. The Trans* ERG looks forward to working with the Company to make this a better, more entertaining place for us all.

Sincerely-
Trans* Netflix

If you can avoid watching Netflix today, do so.

If you can support these employees by sharing articles and raising awareness, do so.

Together, we can work to help end the media propping up transmisia.

Strikes, Boycotts, and Ableism

a computer sits on a desk with the definiition of capitalism pulled up - noun - ˈkapədlˌizəm -  an economic and political system where trade and industry are controlled by private owners which pits all workers and systemically disadvantaged groups against each other in the name of profit - heading has title of this blog post

Many people on the political left like to act as though conservatives have the monopoly on being bigots. That’s included ableism… but, the reality is much different.

As Charis Hill notes in Progressives’ Big Ableism Problem (emphasis mine):

Progressives need to work on understanding that:

Ableism is the trickle down of a mockery of how the president drinks that becomes a denial of autonomy & accommodations, a substandard social security disability wage, or a brutal police murder of a black person whose own death is blamed on their underlying conditions.

There’s no such thing as a progressive ableist.

Note: There is room to say the above and acknowledge that we are each on a journey of learning how to unpack societal norms and systems of oppression that have been forced upon us. This is a great way to use the idea of plural selves from Meg-John Barker.

A great illustration of this political juxtaposition? How many people cited Trump’s mockery of a disabled reporter as ableism. Ableds thought “Well, if Trump admitting sexually predatory behavior wasn’t enough to end his campaign, making fun of poor, pitiful disabled folks should do it.”

We all saw how that turned out.

Yet, if you asked these folks what this reporter’s name or condition was? None of them could name Serge Kovaleski or arthrogryposis. Not unlike inspiration porn, Kovaleski was used as a pawn – a means to an end.

The left’s ableism issue runs deeper than that, including the invention of eugenics. This once ‘progressive’ idea was American-grown before 1900, inspiring Hitler and countless others:

Eugenics was born as a scientific curiosity in the Victorian age. In 1863, Sir Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, theorized that if talented people only married other talented people, the result would be measurably better offspring. At the turn of the last century, Galton’s ideas were imported into the United States just as Gregor Mendel’s principles of heredity were rediscovered. American eugenic advocates believed with religious fervor that the same Mendelian concepts determining the color and size of peas, corn and cattle also governed the social and intellectual character of man.

So, it was no surprise to me when I opened Twitter this morning to see a bunch of lefties tearing down a disabled person.

Disappointing, but not surprising

FYI – if you have sensory issues, allergies, etc.? A lot of those things wind up being brand-dependent, whether that’s medication or food.

As if that wasn’t enough, people are also claiming that this individual should have kept their mouth shut and just ‘dealt’ with it.

Obviously, that’s easier said than done. Secondly? Part of what disability twitter is about is pointing out the covered spots other people have. Pointing out the need for nuance here does not, in any way, harm anyone.

It’s simply a call to not be a shit bag. It shouldn’t be that hard.

Some bots – and even humans! – are reposting the text of the original tweets as if it’s copypasta. Others are posting shitty ‘jokes.’

I hate ableds so much.

Wait… Should we be boycotting?

The Kelloggs workers have not officially called for consumers to formally boycott. Boycotting if the workers have not asked you to can actually harm their efforts. Companies will use this to show why unions are ‘bad’ instead of listening to them.

A spokesperson at BCTGM did suggest that folks can choose to avoid these products in solidarity, though:

You can follow the BCTGM International Union and their Twitter account to stay updated on any changes.

On Strikes and Boycotts

Going back to Meg-John’s idea of the plural self, it is absolutely possible to hold space for multiple realities. This is one situation that calls for that level of nuance.

One
Strikes and boycotts are an important part of the labor movement. They help to correct some of the power imbalances inherent in our society. In a capitalist system, the loss of production – and, therefore, money – is often the only thing that companies will understand.

Two
As a society, we need to remember to make space for those who may be unable to safely participate in strikes or boycotts. Pretending like we can all participate in the same way denies reality.

Three
There is no ethical consumption under capitalism. Period. This is a system that has been designed specifically to harm everyone who isn’t in control.

Having to cross a picket line in order to survive is not a thing that is specific only to the disability community. People living in poverty, food deserts, etc., may not have other options for where to shop and who to give money to. You don’t get to make a moral judgment on another person based on privileges you hold that they don’t.

When we’re talking about oppression and both historically & currently disadvantaged folks? This isn’t an all-or-nothing situation. Hardly anything around justice work actually is.

If you’ve had to cross a picket line to survive? It does not make you a bad person. That alone does not mean you support the workers any less than someone who has the privilege to refrain from crossing that line. If you’re able to, there may be other ways for you to chip in, such as supporting those who are striking financially or raising awareness, etc.

Towards the beginning of the pandemic, I had to cross a picket line. I am #HighRiskCOVID19 and was unable to safely go grocery shopping. We relied on grocery and food delivery for months. I don’t know that I really even left my apartment from mid-March to early May 2020, save walking, taking out the trash, and getting a COVID-19 test.

I’m lucky enough that I’m in a better space physically. I can go to the grocery store and run other errands as long as I have my mask. Early on, especially with everything we didn’t know around COVID and living with another high-risk person? I wasn’t.

While a pandemic may be an extreme example, I hope that it’s a decent illustration that many disabled folks have had to rely on companies in times when others boycott.

All the disability community is asking for is an acknowledgment that this isn’t an either/or issue. Please stop tossing us aside because you want to see things in extremes.

What you could do instead

Examine your ableism.

There are a ton of resources out there:

What is ableism?
Unpacking ableism
Some allyship tips

I’ve collected more here that can help. You could even, idk, hire a disabled person to help you work through that. (I’m out of commission for at least a month, so don’t look at me just yet.)

Listen to disabled folks when we share that something is ableist.

Look, a lot of shit is ableist. A lot. Most of the time, if we point it out? We know what we’re talking about.

There are absolutely times where that hasn’t been the case. Those occasions usually result from a lack of intersectionality or awareness of anything outside of white disability discourse. It’s embarrassing and infuriating but exists.

Conduct mutual aid work.

This works more specifically with strikes or boycotts around services like Amazon, Instacart, DoorDash, etc. If you have the ability, you could go grocery shop for a disabled person who might otherwise rely on these services. Removing the access barrier that forces folks to rely on these companies for goods and services is a great move!

Plus, many historic boycotts only worked because there was mutual aid happening. The Montgomery Bus Boycott is one example. Community coming together is how we are going to get through these fights against oppressive systems like capitalism. That means we have to recognize that some of us are going to have different roles to play in addition to different needs. And that’s okay.

It’s almost like Audre Lorde had it right or something.

a photo of audre lorde with her quote - “Without community, there is no liberation... but community must not mean a shedding of our differences, nor the pathetic pretense that these differences do not exist.”

Final Thoughts

Remember that the white supremacist system WANTS you to get upset at those who have no choice but to cross these lines.

It shifts your anger away from capitalism.

Don’t fall into that trap.

Rheumatology Patients on Immunosuppressive Medications Qualify for Third COVID-19 Vaccine Dose

The following is a press release from the ACR released within half an hour of this post:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices today recommended that rheumatology patients being actively treated with high-dose corticosteroids, alkylating agents, antimetabolites, tumor-necrosis factor (TNF) blockers, and other biologic agents that are immunosuppressive or immunomodulatory receive a third dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.

For more, visit Not Standing Still’s Disease

Combating Anti-Asian/American Bigotry

Combating Anti-Asian/American Bigotry

In case you did not see the news yet, there was an attack yesterday on Asian women in Atlanta by a white supremacist. I’m sure I’m not the only one feeling called to action in response. This comes at a time when anti-Asian/American violence is on the rise.

In that light, I wanted to highlight a series of bystander trainings to combat anti-Asian violence from Hollaback!. If you’re not familiar with Hollaback!, they are an organization that focuses on ending harassment in all forms. They do this by offering resources, conducting research, and providing trainings. If I recall correctly, the focused training around anti-Asian/American violence came about after early COVID-19 remarks.

Resources and ideas for action

I will be honest and say that I don’t know how to wrap up this post. I don’t want to center my own feelings, but also want to acknowledge that many of us may be feeling similar things – shock, grief, anger, etc. It’s important to let ourselves feel these things and use the motivation they may give us to do something measurable.