Good Wishes to all those who are celebrating
It’s utterly depressing how injustice and assumptions continue. People quick to judge when they perhaps no less about the person than those who become close. Systemic racism looming large. Professional opinion clashing resulting in disconnection. Out of respect I bow out as requested.
I attended Race Reflections 2nd conference which helps in making connections and developing thinking. I’ve joined another group of thinkers and the thinking is deep. I sat in awe looking at people who are within our community. Connecting, chatting enjoying the laughter. My mind is blown by the injustice and the talent the multiple ways in which we are excluded and the joy that is unexpectedly found within our groups of connection.
The connections continue to be made, other connections lost for the moment but ever hopeful that they will be renewed at some point in the future.
It was interesting that it’s said racism is viseral. I go to look up who said it, face an article about why it isn’t viseral but the article that comes up can only be accessed through a school or university account, some of us have neither. There are other options for independent researchers where you can access 100 articles in a month if you can access the internet and it is reflective of the systemic racism that we choose to perpetuate. People
I go off the page (a flight response perhaps) and turn back to this and as I do so reflect on Simone Kolysh’s thoughts about how racism results in the flight, fight or freeze response. The bodily response under my diaphragm telling a different story to the article I found. Why is my visera inflamed?
A colleague on twitter who’s name cannot be shared for fear of reprisals (yes you read that right!) reveals how in trying to answer her child’s questions only finds white bodies on her search yet global majority. Representation matters. As I write that I become aware of a niggling fear that that might be received as a dog whistle and question if it’s even safe to reveal anyone’s names any more and as people question how some people even came to be in the conservative party I become lost in questions…people have shared their fears that have gone unanswered now we have a squatter Prime Minister who has “resigned” but hasn’t resigned, rather like the complaint that wasn’t seen as a complaint. Plans for a celebration at public expense and know that nothing has changed despite the excess deaths, and enabled disability, community let down.
Meanwhile family down with covid again, others rescinded conservative party membership. I find myself updating relatives on masks as the ones they are wearing are inadequate. Why is it me having to give them this information? A Nurse but not a Nurse. Why is that.
I’m pondering on how group think can be avoided. Fending off. Interrupted by a pigeon tapping on the window. I swear to God they want in. I try to get a photo but it flies up on to a neighbouring roof.
I’m reflecting on bravery, looking at my notes from yesterday. Contemplating those fleeting moments of joy, fluid and mobile (Telemaque 2021) enabled through connection.
I have so much more energy. I no longer feel sick. My body is more connected and I’m practicing the smoothness of dancing as we enjoyed yesterday. I have a long way to go but I’ve come along way too. I love that I can now do the hip movements that had escaped me and I aspired to. We practice with our hula hoops too, a fun game for all of us, some of us back to the football I’m guessing, perhaps not today? Theorising in the flesh again (Moraga and Anzaldua 1983) (how do you put those little accents on in wordpress…)
Leaning into the systemic ways people are turned away from help. The complainer who was taken away from the work, search Sara Ahmed: On complaint, “the oh here she goes, the same thing over and over. Locked in locked out, paths narrowing, increasing costs”.
The air thick with projections. “We find each other through complaints and yet we combine”.
Queer and none binary people are shouting for help they’ve always suffered the harm that white women are now living through in the USA. The same harm of denied humanity connects us. A story of how a pregnancy and post code lottery determines safety an old story.
I was thinking about some people I met. How quick some were to dismiss the pain shared. Assume it wasn’t true, the carrier of the message dismissed. There is a need for restorative justice. A chance meeting with an old friend, her fight for education has worn her down. Dismissed as the angry parent with no questions as to why and yet the same people do they know about the social determinants of health?
This week I saw a GP, the care I had was great. A privilege noted for what that was; a privilege to be extended a demand to be involved in research. Nothing about us, without us.
I’ve never been a fan of tolerance. I remember back in the 80’s people used to talk about gay tolerance. Who wants to be tolerated and face denial of appropriate care.
Dr Kolysh, themself a biologist, talked about how there is a pressure for transnormativity, gate keepers of diagnostic criteria how healthcare is never trauma informed let alone trans-competent, how it’s arbitrary if people get the right care. How people have to navigate a dangerous process and hostile environments with nothing beyond the stickers and in the UK I wonder if it’s the same beyond the rainbow lanyard. “Tolerance” hides the harm. How there is multi jeopardy as outlined by Dorothy Roberts when it comes to body autonomy, (amazon.co.uk/s?k=killing+the+black+body&i=stripbooks&adgrpid=1188572968461679&hvadid=74286013775854&hvbmt=be&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=131511&hvnetw=o&hvqmt=e&hvtargid=kwd-74285949404620%3Aloc-188&hydadcr=10804_2102148&tag=mh0a9-21&ref=pd_sl_2rfxnp4xga_e) how this harm too goes back to the coercive nature of the provision of birth control with it’s long long history of harm and violence. If ever it needed stating THIS is why people have to be, demand to be involved in any research that directly effects them. I note Dorothy Roberts calls for redress and wonder how the work will impact actions in governments.
I’ve witnessed how harm is reproduced across continents, across time. Those most effected left alone to figure out what they did wrong when they had done nothing wrong. The same people marginalised.
If people have got to here I wonder if they are approached this with the idea that they would take issue with the text before they started? The concept of paranoid reading something I’ve just been introduced to by Lucia Samiento, where the reader expects to take issue with the subject matter before they’ve even begun contrasted with the position where the reader anticipates with an open mind: reparative readings (Eve Sedgwick). Anyway I’m thankful to Mariah (girlpower1.wordpress.com Paranoid vs. Reparative Reading Dec 2013) for clearing that up. Ones humanity should not be “problematic”.
What would be the name for this kind of parental fatigue? Another example of hermeneutical injustice? (Sojourner Truth and later Miranda Fricker’s epistemic injustice) and societal harm felt more acutely in healthcare? Though felt in the shops too as clothes remain problematic