Kate cries crocodiles

i have long maintained that the terf obsession with a flaccid and sometimes moving body part is almost certainly due to the fact they haven't met one in a while. Until now, I've not resorted to blunt truths. I've tried to be super-articulate about terf fear.

open honest reciprocal – bell hooks

Enough is right enough. Really actually feeling reciprocal took reading bell hooks for years. In what I've seen and read it doesn't mean cartesian counting.... it means thinking about who picks your shit up and owning your shit. We all have it by nature of this world: power and privileges: i can sit here and …

love bell hooks or transphobic hate?

Until Liverpool 1990, I didn’t have freedom or access to alternative literature then I found News From Nowhere on Bold Street. Benjamin Zephaniah. Bessie Head. Alice Walker. Maya Angelou. Joan Riley. Toni Morrison. Ellen Galford. And I was free. Train travel = freedom. Jumping trains was easier. 27 years later,  Sisters Uncut journeyed me to London. …

Histories, narratives and fear

  © Mac the Unbecoming Academic 2020

Neo-liberal Intersectionality -pt 2

“If we aren’t resisting, we are internalising. When our bodies are battlegrounds, our friends become our barricades, our resistance becomes our survival, our anger becomes our weaponry, our compassion becomes our compass." (Nim Ralph, 2018) This hit my heart and became a mantra. Nim helped sharpen my focus, soften my edges and put a strength …

Speaking out with love (2014-2019)

acts of resistance

“We cannae call the polis” – fault lines of carceral feminism

Time for the triple wave #metoo tsunami backlash. Domestic abuse survivor narratives and statistics are being used to justify increased spending for the criminal justice services. How does this help survivors? Most of us are already on the outside. Most of us wouldn't piss on the polis if they were on fire. We need secure …

Surviving the Panopticon -pt 1

I've been involved in whistleblowing at a Scottish University. This is a simple sentence. An understatement. It's eroded me since 2017.  Endless advice to keep my head down, not to give evidence, stay out of the firing line, to look after my self by looking/walking away. An old boss (now pal) said I fight with …

Dawn Robert Fletcher and their response to hate

"Roller derby is not a perfect sport, and it is not a perfect community. But the roller derby I know and love will not tolerate transphobic hatred being directed at our people. For all of you who are trans, non binary, genderqueer, gender expansive, questioning, undecided, fluid: You are valued and you matter. Without you, …

Scotland’s collectives

another day of picket lines ©Mac the Unbecoming Academic 2020