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Fiona Robertson fionaswriting.bsky.social Profile picture
Fiona Robertson fionaswriting.bsky.social
@FionasWriting
Disability Justice, feminist, equalities consultant, writer, performance poet. Here for physics, poetry and politics. See link for other contacts She/her 🦕
Jul 2, 2023 • 31 tweets • 6 min read
Once again, the 'death of twitter' jokes are fun but the disability community is filled with dread. Twitter fills a specific niche for so many of us which makes it the place we organise, support each other, develop theory and practice, and have social lives.

1/ No other solution fits the same need, and the community becoming atomised will be devastating for people's health, both mental and physical, since mutual aid is such a big part of people's presence here.

It's the main source of conversation and interaction for many people.

2/
Jun 25, 2023 • 17 tweets • 3 min read
Every single thing about this article is horrifying. One of the UK's papers of record is violently misrepresenting Gillick Competence - a foundational feminist victory and central to the safety of all children, but especially girls.

Thread: Gillick, disability and feminism.

1/ The Times is lying about Gillick Competence here - they keep referring to a 16-year-old as Gillick Competent. 16-year-olds are not Gillick Competent - it only applies to children under the age of 16. Once you are 16, you just have all rights of privacy in healthcare.

2/
Jun 2, 2023 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
The more shock wears off, the more horror sets in.

The Editor of a national paper of record commissioned a web tool designed to turn an abstract social concept into a defined quantity of how much it hurts you, personally, to keep disabled people alive.

1/ The level of intent here is utterly horrifying. Using provocative 'questions' as engagement bait is one thing, but this is sinister beyond belief.

It can't be handwaved away as a guest oped in the marketplace of ideas - it's the Editor writing to the readership as Editor.

2/
Jun 2, 2023 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
CN: eugenics

I guess we were foolish to point out how @JeremyVineOn5's tweet so closely echoed Nazi propaganda which led directly to Aktion T4, specifically this poster.

The editor of the @Telegraph, Chris Evans, apparently saw that and thought it'd be fun to update it.

1/ Nazi propaganda poster show... I don't really have any words for how dark this is. It's been coming for a long time (despite some commentary, this is not the powers that be just now turning their eye on us - we've been in their sights for 20 years), but this escalation is extreme.

2/
Apr 21, 2023 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
CN: DWP

I've talked about this before, but as this ad is activating trauma, I want to explain what disabled people live with.

More than 15 years ago (yes, before the Tories), all my benefits suddenly stopped. When I called to ask why I was put through to the fraud office.

1/ CN: DWP

I'd been given no warning of this, no chance to answer. I just suddenly had no money. They told me they'd had people sitting outside my flat taking photos and 'caught' me carrying shopping (I think, it was some mundane action but so long ago).

2/
Apr 20, 2023 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
CN: EDs

I have been trying not to comment on this until experts spoke up because anorexia is one of the most lethal mental health conditions in existence. It is serious, and it's one of the conditions where we know how we talk about it can cause direct, material harm.

1/ CN: EDs

I had, somewhat naively, thought it would be a look at a person's experience of anorexia and current knowledge. But once you commit to transphobia, there is nobody you won't burn. It doesn't matter how much damage you do as long as you get to hurt trans people too.

2/
Apr 19, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
I'm not sure if these people are ignorant or just cruel, but they don't ever talk about how the concept of safeguarding children in schools is largely based on watching out for harm being done to them by their own families.

1/ For most kids, outing them won't put them at risk of lethal harm. Most. Not all. For a large percentage of these children, it will result in them retreating into themselves until they can get out. Some will run away, putting them at risk of sexual exploitation.

2/
Apr 17, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
This conversation is *so interesting*. It's about why it's so important to work with disabled-people-led organisations (OPDs in international language) on the ground, rather than relying on big humanitarian orgs in disasters who are slow to recognise local accessibility needs.
1/ There are speakers from Ukraine, Moldova and Indonesia, talking about war, refugees, climate disasters, and local upheaval. Examples include support going to internally displaced people, while disabled people who cannot evacuate/leave their homes at all can't access funds.

2/
Mar 13, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
There is so much fear and despair in the UK disability community right now. The massive expansion of conditionality (the rotting heart of the post-2005 social security system) and what appears to be a return to work-as-a-health-outcome are going to kill a lot of people.

1/ This is not the way it has to be. These are political choices, not inevitable consequences of a chaotic economy. There are ways to build a system which supports people and the economy would be stabilised in turn.

But this is a democide. The deaths are a feature, not a bug.

2/
Mar 10, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
I am appalled at this statement from @RefugeCharity. I can't understand how a celebrity ambassador means more than all their work for survivors.

There are a few different elements to why it's such a bad statement and replicates patterns Refuge is supposed to advocate against.
1/ We have spoken to Fiona tod... First: a history of doing good things in public does not excuse harm done. That she's done a lot of good work in the abstract doesn't make it ok that she suddenly gave up on it when it was inconvenient.

2/
Jan 19, 2023 • 15 tweets • 3 min read
I got home from an event last night and cried because, more than any other, it cemented for me that part of my life is over. It was a lovely event - queer, left-wing, arty - and there were about 60 people in a small pub and I was the only one in a mask.

1/ I arrived late because of a workshop, and ended up leaving early because I couldn't justify the risk anymore. Had a lovely night with friends at the weekend where we played board games and laughed for hours, and mostly masked. Looks like that's my social life from now on.

2/
Jan 16, 2023 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
I don't have the energy to do a full GRR/Section 35 thing going to write points:

1 - the notion that the Tories - the *Tories* - are taking such an extreme action because they care about women is utterly absurd. Anyone who parrots this idea uncritically is lying to you.

1/ The Tories brought you the Rape Clause, starving mothers to feed their children, supporting the drowning of women and children in the Channel, and so many more horrors they *knew* would disproportionately affect women. They DO NOT CARE ABOUT WOMEN.

2/
Jan 15, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
So the thing about Labour comments on the NHS - yes, there really does need to be a revolution in how patients are treated in the medical system (not just ours - in medicine), but those of us who could tell them exactly what needs to change know Labour has no capacity to do it. We're the exact people who have been on the knife's edge of the cruel and dangerous ableist system they created. We know how Cooper, Reeves and the rest of the corporate side of Labour approach systems change and we are not the ones who benefit from it.