CN: extensive discussion of police brutality, police tactics, institutional racism, brief discussion of of gender-based violence, sexual assault, and mass shootings

We know that fiction can be based on fact but how often is fact influenced by fiction? The beloved show Star Trek has long been famous for inspiring the invention of many of the "futuristic" technologies used in the show. The Black Lives Matter movement has repeatedly called on us to dismantle and recreate our law enforcement systems, to replace the current oppressive, violent, and racist version. Now, Dennis Upkins takes a look a...

Are you interested in seeing your writing published on Yopp? You are in luck! Yopp is officially open to submissions for guest posts, once again. 

Yopp relies on a diversity of voices in order to support its mission of centering marginalized voices. While I write the majority of Yopp's articles, I cannot offer first hand experiences for all marginalizations. The wider variety of experiences that can be represented, the better Yopp is equipped to accomplish its goals. 

Articles on Yopp are engaging, informative, thoughtful, and in-depth. I’m looking for pieces that prioritize harm reduction...

CN: extensive description of the experience of autism including ableist treatment, triggers, and sensory overload.  Mention of ableist term. 

Autism advocacy as a branch of activism is something I've learned a huge amount about just in the last few years, and one of the repeating problems the community faces has been how any "advice" on interacting with autistic people that's published in large scale media sources, is exclusively written by neurotypical or allistic (the opposite of autistic) people. Having grown my circle of openly autistic friends in these last few years, it was very qui...

When I started the process of developing a logo for Yopp back in April, I had one goal in mind: Start making merch! 

While we officially launched our merch page a few weeks ago with the introduction of the Ableism Bingo Cards, we now have a larger merch store on Redbubble that we'll be adding to as new designs are finished! 

To start, we have our merch sporting our new logo. 

You can get one of five different variations of the logo-- Pale pink, rose, maroon, full color, and full color with our website-- on a whole bunch of different products. Here are just a few of them to get you inspired bu...

CN: General discussion of food and healthy eating habits, mental health, and the emotional impact of the pandemic, brief mention of bodily functions, and white supremacy. Extensive discussion of rats including photos! 
 
Everything happening in the world at the moment is a lot and it can be easy to default to just disconnecting from current events, or pushing through without taking care of yourself which can result in burnout. Neither of these extremes is ideal. As a change of pace, I’m offering you this lovely, silly self-care article, with the hopes that it both gives you good reminders for...

Note: In addition to being a source of education, this post announces Yopp’s brand new merch store on Zazzle! To start buying, check out our new merch page or skip straight to buying products that support Yopp on our Zazzle store.

CN: Extensive and detailed discussion of social ableism and victim-blaming & gaslighting regarding health and ability; use of ableist language & slurs for educational purposes, and mention of suicide.

If you ask someone dealing with any kind of disability or illness, mental or physical, about what questions or comments they get over and over from healthy people t...

I haven't gotten in the habit of keeping track of when special days or months are related to social justice topics so it took me by surprise when I discovered that July is Disability Pride month! 

Given that, I quickly changed my publishing schedule around to prioritize a big disability-related project I had been working on but... it's not done yet. So in the mean time, in lieu of a new blog post this week, I thought I'd offer you a compilation of my favorite articles about disability, chronic illness, and mental health that I've written over the years. 

You can also check out the disability,...

CN: extensive discussion of government sanctioned violence, racially motivated police brutality, and violence against women; brief discussion of of 45, sexual assault, torture, and immigrant deportation camps. 

Living in the US, it can be easy to forget the ways our systems and political histories are mirrored by those of other countries, and as a result, we can potentially find wisdom in other political movements similar to ours. Guest writer Marie-Ève Monette does an excellent job connecting the recent protests in the US to movements in Bolivia that have fought against colonialism and gender...

CN: extensive discussion of systemic racism, racially motivated violence, and white supremacy; general discussion of other forms of oppression.

As soon as the Black Lives Matter protests reached their peak, I knew that I needed to have some kind of response on my blog and I knew that the best possible response would be from a black writer. The first person I contacted was Dennis Upkins, whose scathing and witty critiques have been published several times on this blog before. I'm incredibly honored to publish the article that he sent me. 

“But it is not enough for me to stand before you tonight a...