turnedtofire.bsky.social
Fandom/media thoughts and news/politics (mostly UK, esp NI) commentary. Expect long threads.
Queer, survivor, disabled, AuDHD, not here for your transphobia, racism, ableism, or abuse apologism.
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I'm poor as dirt and struggle day to day just to afford the bare minimum of things my family needs to survive.
If someone offered me $10,000,000 to play a five minute role in a Harry Potter film, non-speaking, just there in the film somewhere, I'd still say no. I won't help her kill trans people.
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*The money this show will generate, in part thanks to Frost will in no way be offset by whatever percentage he would donate. So the hypothetical is a nonstarter. But also, HE ISN'T doing that.
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Nick Frost’s role in Harry Potter helps fuel the empire J.K. Rowling uses to fund anti-trans harm. By lending his credibility, he obscures that harm—putting a pro-trans face on her work that reassures liberals into feeling okay supporting work that funds her and keeps her culturally relevant.
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A smooth, oven-ready Brexit was meant to be accomplished by digital technology too, I seem to remember...
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By that time it tends to be too late, which ought to be obvious as we drag ourselves through the umpteenth year of life in the UK getting worse and worse because just enough people were convinced that Brexit would only inconvenience the immigrants they personally disapproved of.
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At some point you have got to reckon with the fact that we are undergoing a massive social experiment by the Labour government in seeing how many people it can render piecemeal as non-citizens without the rest of you noticing: you who only make a fuss when you are personally affected by bad systems.
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"But they would have to consult with affected groups..."
Read any major disability org'a recent press releases on the deliberately flawed and inadequate consultation the government is running on the planned disability benefit reforms: the consultation omits asking about the most destructive plans.
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And our disability discrimination laws in the UK are not some sort of mobile speed trap that gets rolled out in front of incoming legislation and ensures it won't disadvantage anyone ever: what they do is put the onus on disabled people to sue (with what Legal Aid?) when discriminated against.
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Too often there's an assumption that a combination of tech and in-person help can solve everything, but try speaking to someone whose support hours have been cut, or whose ageing parent lives independently but finds even "senior" mobiles unmanageable. Again, these are real people.
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While most disabled people own a smartphone, people with intellectual disabilities are less likely to, and more likely to have difficulties. This is a group of real people that gets left behind by digital ID, especially as their support is frequently cut. www.researchgate.net/publication/...
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And the reaction to this playing out in practice is always "Oh, they didn't tell us that would happen." Stop listening to the same governments that are already happy to skate over the real practicalities of the most marginalised peoples' lives, and listen to people who actually know and care.
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That's the whole reason that successive governments have been able to gain just enough public consent for a succession of measures that significantly harmed millions of people: because most people lack a crucial degree of imaginative curiosity about lives unlike their own.
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We see again and again how people will dive into agreeing with ideas like smartphone-based ID on the grounds that "most people in my area use the tech that would underpin it already", which ignores that most people largely associate with people similar to themselves.
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The point is that if Labour were to bring in such a thing, its failures would most hit people already at the margins: the people whose experiences are apparently already invisible to many Guardian readers, suggesting a certain failure to actually read that paper's coverage of those issues.
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Owning a smart device is not the same as being able to use it in the contexts where it matters most, as was found in this 2020 research.
www.ridc.org.uk/news/researc...
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The comment section to that article is a parade of muppets who've never heard of digital exclusion, think disability discrimination laws magically prevent new systems being brought in that further it (if only), and missed the cock-up that was all-digital Settled Status for EU citizens.
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I shared this list with somebody earlier cain.ulster.ac.uk/issues/viole...
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rubberbullets.longlead.com/chapter/rubb...
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Also, this is the time to leverage your local queer community: given the choice I would always rather buy services from queer-owned businesses, so advertise in any relevant local venues - also in their Discord servers if they have a business section.
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Coffee shops where writers lurk: check Instagram and Eventbrite to suss out which ones the local writing groups meet in. Also community arts centres, and museums and galleries if they're up for it: we are held up only by caffeine and are sponges for low-cost or free activities.