Yopp!

I met Jamie Dedes, the founding editor of The BeZine, back in August of 2019, when she interviewed me for her website, The Poet by Day, and shortly after I published a guest post of hers about the organization 100 Thousand Poets for Change (100TPC).Through the month of February, I am collaborating with The BeZine blog and Jamie on a full month of posts related to the theme of disability and illness. As part of that collaboration, my article today is being cross-published both here and on The BeZine blog. 

I'm publishing several other articles and even a few poems on The BeZine as part o...

CN: extensive discussion of the experience of being in an abusive relationship, discussion of physical abuse and the painful process of recovery after abuse, mention of sexual abuse. 

Being able to recognize that you are being abused, while the abuse is still happening, is mind-bogglingly difficult. I say mind-boggling because even though dozens of people trying to tell me that my relationship was abusive was completely ineffective for me, it’s still my first instinct when someone’s partner exhibits abusive behaviors to try to tell them that. I know that this extremely straight-forward tactic...

If you don’t need the introduction, skip to the heading “Choosing How to Help” for the list of ways you can get involved in fighting the Australia bushfires. Scroll to the bottom for a list of resources if you or your family are in need of help.

CN: in depth discussion of the consequences of the Australia bushfires, and climate change. Discussion of government corruption, and animal death and endangerment, mention of concentration camps, mental health issues, and anti-LGBT sentiments.  

Back in June, when I read the newest developments about the US concentration camps for immigrants, I realized...

CN: extensive discussion of the dynamics, healing process, and emotional experience of abuse. General discussion of PTSD and trauma responses. This post may encourage trauma processing. Read it at your own pace!

I have a large number of friends who have been through at least one kind of abuse and I’ve noticed that if someone has gone through the process of recognizing that something that happened to them was abusive at least once, it becomes much more important to them to evaluate future behaviors as potentially abusive. 

It can be really difficult to tell, especially if you have PTSD and some o...

CN: in depth discussion of racism and white supremacy including specific examples of racist behavior; mention of 45, domestic violence, George Zimmerman, the Parkland students, and pedophilia.  

I want to keep this intro simple and just remind my white readers of a few good practices of allyship: 1. Listen more than you talk. 2. Expect and embrace discomfort as part of your learning process. 3. Remember that the biases that we all have don't feel like biases and so we have to rely on the people who's experiences are different from ours to reflect back to us when something we've categorized as...

CN: In-depth discussion of the usage and purpose of slurs and the common defenses for using slurs; discussion of racism, sexism, anti-gay bias, and classism. 
 

Warning: There will be a couple of slurs written out in full in this article. They are written this way to maintain clarity in a purely educational piece. I made a point to limit how many slurs I used and to avoid using any slurs that would be particularly egregious for a person with my set of privileges to use.  

“You shouldn’t say that word.” 
 

At some point in our lives, we have all had the experience of someone telling us that a word...

CN: in depth discussion of rape culture, sexual assault, gender-based violence, xenophobic violence, government sanctioned oppression in South Africa. Brief discussion of corrective sexual assault and apartheid.  

Many of the issues featured on this blog are discussed in terms of how they manifest in the United States, primarily because that is where most of my audience is located, and I have the most specific knowledge about the social patterns that occur here. However, very few social justice issues are unique to the US and our American-centric news system means that we’re frequently unawar...

CN: brief discussion of sexuality, sexism influenced medical neglect, reproductive disorders, and disability.

Remember my interview about sex and disability last month on the podcast Into Your Body? 

Story time: Before that podcast was recorded, Vi La Bianca, a previous guest blogger for Yopp, invited me to come onto her youtube show Secular Sexuality to discuss sex and disability. To be honest, I felt nervous about interviewing about a topic I don't particularly specialize in-- while I talk about disability all the time, sex isn't a common topic for me, and I've only had one partner since b...

CN: discussion of 45, Brock turner, Kavanaugh, sexual assault, erasure of Native American history, racism, ableism, poverty, the manifestations of oppression. Mention of sexism, genocide, police corruption, and rape culture. 
 

Have you ever thought something like, Why am I so frustrated that this guy on the internet who I’ve never met doesn’t think that sexism exists? Why didn’t he listen to me when I told him about the time someone was sexist to me? Did I not communicate clearly enough?
 

The existence of power imbalances in our relationships between us and the people we work with, our friends...

CN: Explicit descriptions and in depth discussion of chronic pain, abuse, medical neglect, gaslighting, and oppression through poverty. Discussion of sexual assault, trauma, mental and illness. Mention of genitals.
 

There is a disconnect between the experience of a patient and the experience of a medical professional, one that worsens if the patient’s illness is chronic or not easily explained. As more and more stories of medical neglect as a result of marginalization are brought to light, I hope that we can collectively reduce that disconnect and bring understanding and accommodation of marg...