I am a queer, autistic, disabled, anarchist. I have a focus on fighting ableism, and run spaces with that being an intention. One thing I put a lot of focus on is ableist language. I stream, run a youtube channel, and a discord.
alt-text: [yellow words saying “abolish cis puberty” next to a trans flag on a digital art wooden background]
How we treat puberty relates heavily to the systems of transphobia, sexism, and quite a lot of other hierarchies. How we treat it is a large component of systematic oppression and must be taken seriously.
alt-text: the words “no ethical production under capitalism” with production underlined. It is next to the ancom flag, and is over a digital art wooden background.
yes, they were specifically asked for, and closed captions are also available
I will try increasing the size for my next video and see how that works
the point was to summarize it for people with difficulties with short term memory (a lot of the people I work with), and putting it before may add confusion on that end
I was trying less pauses with this one, but yeah might not be as good.
and for information overload, the point is that it is as condensed and short as possible, i deal with a lot of people who need that level of information to stay engaged. This exists as an alternative to those slow 2+hour essays. Ultimately that will likely always be an issue for a good portion of people
i mean, democracy is a hierarchical idea in the first place so its not like it makes much of a difference to me. I mean in the general sense here though specifically, so I think the tense is fine
alt-text: [ a thumbnail of blue text on a digital art wooden background next to the hand holding a rose democracy symbol. The text has multiple variations either saying "you won't notice democracy ending, nobody notices democracy ending, or democracy ends quietly"]
yeah the hatred of bikes is a big one, and so are cars. Lots of the "an"prim type on that front. Being able to walk places is cool, removing all cars is not.
well lots of people blaming AI art for things, when it is just a different method to make art, cameras a while ago following the same trend
Then there is the constant attack of service animals and such being allowed places. There are more I have talked about before but I can’t remember them off the top of my head
it tends to be on a much more individual basis, peoples support of accessibility tools being conditional on whether or not they like that particular person. Similar to how liberals often try misgendering right wingers, especially trans ones like blair white and all that.
People can do shitty things with accessibility. I could use alt-text on images to figure out who I could call slurs when I might not be able to otherwise.
That is not an argument against accessibility. People can potentially use their access to society to do harm, but not having access is guaranteed harm. It is not just guaranteed harm though, it is specifically systematic harm against disabled people on the basis of being disabled. Doing hierarchy because some members of another group might potentially choose to do hierarchy themselves does not reduce hierarchy overall, it makes it much worse.
Anybody who blames the accessibility tools themselves is a reactionary. This includes what people do with stuff like AI. No matter how much you try you will never go back to some ideal past. The AI is not going away. Your choice is simply whether or not you do hierarchy.
alt-text for thumbnail embed: text saying "law is harm" and then a smaller "fuck cops & judges", next to a trans flag with half of it covered by the black anarchist triangle. This is all over a 2d digital art wooden background.
what if, by giving the lesser evil more energy and making them a greater evil, you give them the ability to put you in prison camps when the original greater evil could not?
Nobody is protesting the concentration camps under biden, or even calling them that, yet they did under trump.
Everyone upvoting this person missed the point of the post
even if the servers are queer friendly, I haven’t found one yet that doesn’t allow things like ableist language. They only feel marginally better with the tradeoff of smaller games
The only thing that makes an evil "lesser" is that there is less energy going towards supporting it. By putting it into power you make it the greater evil. "Lesser evil" shit is something everyone has to unlearn if they are ever going to help anyone.
How far capitalists and the state are willing to go is as far as they think they can get away with. If any capitalist or politician is being held back by morals, they will be replaced by ones that aren’t. If there is a profit margin to squeeze, anyone willing to squeeze it gains that power.
People can get away with a lot more with less scrutiny, so the lesser you think their evil is, the more of it they can get away with.
The “lesser” fascist is still a fascist, and fascists spend much more of their time attacking us than attacking each other, and on top of that even if they do attack each other it's through attacking us.
I see a lot of people reacting negatively to minorities and leftists breaking down on social media over something seemingly trivial. They will often say “wow they are making us look bad, we need to make sure to stop anyone near me from doing that”
The thing about that though is right wingers will push and push and push. They will spend all day every day harassing someone until they finally break down and have an outburst. It doesn't matter how much of a model minority you think you are, you have a breaking point. The straw that breaks the camels back doesn’t look significant on its own, that is the entire point. There is no way this will ever look good for us, and there is no way we can all tank it to the face forever. The mentality that these “make us look bad” is exactly the reactionary thought we are trying to fight.
In essence people are seeing reactionary action done in response to our open existence, and thinking preventing our existence to reduce reactionary action is the right way forward. Reactionaries are attacking because it is not what they want. I don’t want a world where reactionaries are content not to fight, that just means they’ve won.
They will get those clips one way or another. They will loot in riots themselves and record it if they have to. They will spew their shit regardless of what we do. The best thing we can do is accept it and actually get shit done.
Timing the start of something is not a simple process. Punishing people for being late disproportionately impacts poor and disabled people. Not all of us can drive a car or even have a car to drive. We might have to wait on other people, or use public transportation, and the more steps we add to the process the more likely something is to go wrong. Punishing people for being late is systematic oppression towards these groups. This punishment can include starting without people, especially if that itself is framed as a punishment.
“Let the late ones be late and miss out (they can read the minutes), and reward the prompt ones by not wasting their time”
From the rusty's rules of order, something the IWW uses to organize. They are ableist.
On the other hand, waiting too long to start can impact people with limited time or energy. Not everyone can stay awake an extra hour just to wait for something to start.
This means that there is not one singular solution for how to start things (although obviously don’t do punishment). In small groups the best solution is to talk things over with everyone and get an idea for what everyone wants to happen, what can go wrong, and plans to mitigate any potential issues. If public transportation is running late, maybe someone with a car can go pick you up.
For large groups, most things do not need a strict starting time. If it is a large group and it requires strict attendance then you brought hierarchy into it long ago and ableism and such was always the conclusion you were going to get anyways.
edit:
organizing in a way where disabled people are inherently accommodated instead of shoved into some “extra” system makes a big difference
to reply to those below,
it is "entitled" to think that it isn’t ableist to force people into systems instead of building systems around the people there.
to put it simply, if a group is organized in a way where you must actively decide to favor one social group over another systematically and it is always the same group, you failed and are just doing hierarchy, in this case on the basis of ability. It doesn't matter if you can't imagine organizing without ableism, that is still ableism.
I got a discord linked in my bio for people who are a fan of that form of organizing, as you can see here it isn't common even in these spaces
A lot of people's free time goes towards setting up things that goes towards more free time in the future, like planting gardens. A lot of their free time also goes towards things like rest, which is radical in this capitalist hellhole of a society. We work more efficiently when we take time to heal, and an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. This efficient work allows us to rest more, repeating the cycle.
Since this is a feedback loop, wasting even a little bit of someone's time regularly can make a big impact
This is why capitalists hate cashiers sitting down. They can say it is about “professionalism” all they want, but the point is to tire you out. When you are tired you can’t look for another job, you can’t build things like gardens that reduce your dependence on them, and you can’t build other forms of organizations that get you what you need. All you have time for is to sit down, order some food, and fall asleep.
[Moral of the story: if for some reason a lot of cops got bedbugs it would reduce the amount of policing they are able to do both now and into the future]
do think it can sometimes be harder to build an initial rapport online. The lack of body language can make it tricky to convey meaning sometimes in the same way you would offline
im autistic, that makes it easier. People can use tone indicators online.
alt-text for thumbnail in case it embeds: it is an image of a queer flag with an infinity symbol, on a drawn wooden background with the words "autistic people mistaken for AI" on it
a big issue is accessibility as well, a lot of those are organized around headshots and are much less clear visually, as well as requiring much stronger computers to play
so while tf2 has a fascist problem, it also has a lot of people i aint gonna leave behind
I am looking for people to play both games with. The games tend to be filled with lots of reactionaries so it can be hard to exist in them.
Like I get kicked a lot in tf2 for having a queer flag pfp, and it is hard to queue for group content in dark and darker if I don't want to hear slurs.
The outernet is not safe for everyone. Many immunocompromised people would be risking their lives by going to in person meetings, especially since so few of you wear masks. Many queer people live in areas where even so much as giving a hint of your queerness can be dangerous. So, for many, reaching out to a person who may be leftist to build a connection is gambling with your life.
The internet allows you to build connections and find people with a much lower risk of retaliation. The information and connections provided through it has been essential for so many getting out of abusive situations. If nobody is there for these people to reach out to, many just die.
I have seen many people move across the country to be closer to the people they had safely built a community with. Internet communities can become physical ones if the need and bonds are there.
Tradition is not more important than using all the tools available to you, and that should be extremely clear for anarchists.
One important thing to remember as well, if you don’t think your action can be useful you won’t even try to make it useful. Keep that in mind when reading any comments on this.
It normalizes the methods they use to transmit their ideas, and the ideas themselves. You are not immune to propaganda. You cannot entirely control the systems you use to process information. The more you use and reference an idea, the more makes its way through it. The more familiar something feels, the less you are able to question it.
It doesn't matter if you are joking. It doesn't matter if you are being "ironic". It doesn't matter if you are "on our side". Your actions have consequences. Spreading fascism is spreading fascism.
If you do this, there will come a time where you realize the people around you aren't actually joking anymore. By then it will be too late.
This impacts you even if you aren't the one saying it as well. Consuming propaganda leads to the spread of propaganda. As you use systems to process information, others must reference those systems to understand the output. Every time someone says "too many people exist" overpopulation pops up in your head. Doesn't matter if you agree with it, it's there.
This can be helped by engaging it critically every time it happens, by breaking the flow of normal conversation and interaction when it comes up. This will not fix the issue, so don't over rely on it.
Many platforms allow you to tag specific words to either remove the message or warn it. That is one way to break that flow, so it doesn't skate in under the normalcy of the regular consumption of media.
Add fascist shit like "IQ" there.
Add fascist conspiracy theories like "overpopulation" there
Add "sanity", and all that references it there. All that references is whether you believe in hierarchies after all.
Add ableist language like "dumb" or "stupid" there.
Break up what you consume. Give yourself the ability to stop and think about it. This has really changed how I approach media and interaction.
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a lot of their harm is built around dependence on them
we can do stuff about many forms of it without direct interaction, and we do not need their permission for it