Right. So. The fact that the 'accessible' part of the Great Big Queen Queue has been permanently shut down should be getting way more attention. Here's why. Let me tell you a story from last night: #QueueForTheQueen The idea behind the Accessible Queue is that the very old, sick or disabled people can 'pay their respects' without having to walk for 14 hours in the cold. There were limited, staggered time slots. Yesterday it was shut it down by lunchtime. So what did those people do?
>

I’ve gone on holiday on purpose, by myself.
This heatwave seemed a good time to break the habit of a decade and actually take a few days off to rest. But I couldn’t afford to travel to somewhere cold AND stay somewhere nice.
So I’m in a hotel up the road.
I’m not leaving it. This year so far I have:
Worked a 20-week writers’ room for A Big Shh Project
Worked another 5 week writers’ room
Published 40 essays
Written two screenplays
Published a book
Dealt with the dramatic fallout from said book
Travelled to America to see my partner
Got Covid >

Thread: here are some ways to handle a heatwave, for other #actuallyautistic people and anyone else who might need it.

I’m one of those autistic people who gets really sick in the heat, so here’s what I learned living through several US heatwaves without air conditioning. > Firstly: you really do need to keep drinking water. Unless you’re very attuned to it, you might not realise when your body needs fluids until you are already dehydrated. In a heatwave, dehydration is more dangerous. Set a timer to drink water every hour if you have to. >

This article by @JonHaidt is interesting, instructive and wrong. The long-view look at democracy and technology is an essential, all-too-rare perspective. There are also some fundamental fallacies in the analysis that seem to stem from Haidt’s baseline priorities and assumptions.

https://twitter.com/jonhaidt/status/1511305207807987712

One assumption here- and it’s one that American writers of every political persuasion make- is that the American democratic experiment is the best possible framework for human society. That any substantial deviation from the Founding Fathers’ basic paradigm amounts to heresy.

Here we go:
1. The state should not have the power to subjugate people on the basis of observed sex. Nor should the way a person is treated, relates to the world, or chooses to identify be constrained on that basis. >

https://twitter.com/oliverburkeman/status/1501899385130655747

2. There is a concerted effort all over the world to return women to a state of sexual subservience and economic dependence on men, to coerce women into doing the vital life-making work of care and reproduction whether they want to or not. >

Apparently I need to be clear about this, but I have never once claimed that @jk_rowling made up her trauma, or lied about experiencing violence, or deserves to be threatened or abused. For the record, this is what I said in the same piece that’s being quoted out of context: I have no reason to disbelieve @jk_rowling’s account of her experience. She didn’t and doesn’t deserve to be abused. That’s still true, even though today she bizarrely chose to use her platform to tell the world I’m lying about my experience of trauma. Integrity matters. ‘Night.x

Hey, I wanted to say, to everyone who reads my work, whether or not you’re a supporter on @substack: thank you for your patience lately while I’ve been getting my head back together.
I’m sorry to say that the misogynist, transphobic media monstering over my book took its toll. > I’m alright now, and well on the way to being back on track, after losing a week to a minor mental health kernel panic when I was already pulling 15-hour days and could least afford to collapse.
It’s silly, but I didn’t expect such a strong reaction. It took me by surprise. >

Graham Linehan, free speech champion, has threatened me with legal action unless I delete a tweet and apologise. Here’s the apology:

I apologise for calling Graham Linehan a vile bigot. Never having met him, I have no idea if he is vile, and it was wrong of me to say so. > I further apologise for suggesting that no publishing company should help Linehan publish his hate speech.
It was wrong of me to single him out that way. No publishing company should help anyone publish hate speech.

The use of books as a way of signalling, or the idea that ‘I’ve read more books than you’ is a way to get one over on someone else, has always disturbed me.

https://twitter.com/spignal/status/1436358352171409410

I really think having or even reading lots of books ought to be morally neutral. Books are great, but I know people who are highly intelligent, knowledgeable and well-educated who prefer other ways of learning and other forms of storytelling.

When I was 14 years old, I saved my pocket money to go and see a writer I admired give a talk. I couldn’t afford to buy the book as well (I was 14). I shyly asked if he would sign my notebook instead.
He rolled his eyes and told me to get lost.
That’s how I met #DouglasCoupland. Many years later, I was lucky enough to find out for myself just how stressful book tours can be. Writers don’t have infinite social energy. And yes, it IS annoying when people don’t get that you’re there to sell books.

But Mr Coupland taught me an important lesson that day >

Hear me out on this.
Dune: THE PANTO.

https://twitter.com/dunemovie/status/1430213329901871104

Made on a budget of no more than five hundred pounds, most of which goes to hiring the coloured smoke machine.

Mother Superior as Panto Dame: ‘ooh, young man- put your hand in my box!’

Unpopular opinion: leave Lena Dunham the fuck alone. Too many people who should know better have seen this woman as fair game for the most sadistic bullshit ever. The fact that there has been legitimate criticism over the years doesn’t mean that there hasn’t been a fuck of a lot of sexism, internalised misogyny and body-shaming.

Right-wingers are now using the language of anti-rape and pro-choice activism to justify vaccine refusal- talking about the importance of consent, personal autonomy, and ‘my body, my choice’.

But the two issues are NOT ethically the same. Not at all. And this is why. > Feminists have long argued for women and AFAB people’s essential right to decide what happens to our own bodies- that nobody should be able to force us to have sex we don’t want, or to carry a pregnancy and give birth against our will. >

THREAD:
The question of how to balance different peoples’ needs in public spaces is important. It’s being had in bad faith right now, by people who want to make the case for excluding minority groups- but it speaks to something important that lots of communities are considering. As we become more connected, as difference becomes more visible and distance is truncated, our ability to impact one another is outstripping the current infrastructure we have to care for and protect one another. We don’t have good heuristics for balancing different needs.

TLDR: misogynist extremism and white supremacy are linked and always have been.
In this generation especially, frustrated misogyny and sexual entitlement are key recruiting factors for the far right. Many modern extremists were radicalised through the incel/PUA manosphere. >

https://twitter.com/bungarsargon/status/1372198654732341250

>this is horrific in its own right, of course. Gender-based violence against women is ALREADY a hate crime.
But in many countries, it’s next to impossible to separate the logic of male supremacy from the logic of white supremacy. So much of the ideology of the latter is about >

Being reckless with the lives of others isn’t really in the spirit of Christmas, is it? Let me break this down for anyone who feels like they are going mad-as someone who does political analysis for a living but who is also, crucially, one of the sappiest soppiest Carol-hollering fairy-light-festooning Christmas Spirit elves you will ever meet:
Really, stay at home.

[thread] We’ve heard a lot about the downsides of so much of our professional lives moving to video platforms. But I think that for some people there have also been real advantages.

EG: I’m physically small. I am not used to taking up the same space as everyone else. It’s great! Women and other AFAB people are used to monitoring our physical presence. If you’re petite like me, you get spoken over/patronised/dismissed. But if you’re taller/ heavier, you get to worry about being ‘intimidating’ or taking up more space than women are allowed to occupy.

Spent today reading ‘Hood Feminism’ by @Karnythia - excellent, and required reading for all white people in the feminist movement. Found myself called out in the last chapter. Which I appreciated, though it was painful to read, as it made the hit home.
It got me thinking > Over the years, I’ve watched so many white, cis and/or otherwise privileged progressives behave like wankers when they’re called out. I’ve seen people use the fact of angry criticism to play the victim and double down on their own wankery. It’s boring, predictable, and so toxic.

Since we’re all talking about the ‘Blitz Spirit’, and how we should act like Londoners in WW2, here’s something that never makes it into the official story.
Remember those iconic photos of working-class Londoners sheltering in tube stations? Well, that wasn’t meant to happen > The government did not build the recommended municipal shelters, preferring to leave that to private companies + individuals. When the bombs first fell, the underground was barricaded. The fear was that once the working class went underground, they would never come up again >

I went to a private school. I am keenly aware of how privileged I am to have done so. They are absolutely, categorically, engines of inequality, and I don’t know how anyone of conscience can argue otherwise. > It wasn’t just the actual education I received at that school that made a difference. It was the support of teachers who had time to engage with a needy, intelligent child like me, within a structure that encouraged the highest expectations. >

Right. It’s Friday night. The rainforest is burning and fascists are wrecking what’s left of democracy.
Let’s talk about depression.
[content warning: mental health chat!]
Firstly: seriously, how is everyone doing? Almost everyone I know and love is having a hard time right now. Almost everyone I know comes home from a hard day being ground on the wheel of late stage disaster capitalism and tries to wrap their shattered brain around the very real prospect of species collapse. It’s a lot.