Sociologist, Aberystwyth. Critical disability studies. Overthinking trauma, bodies, pain, time, sexuality, crip rage, queer joy. Knitter, sewist, reptile herder, forever exhausted. She/her. 🏳️🌈 Compost the rich. https://linktr.ee/dremmasheppard
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Thank you for this! Seeing it broken down in a non-UK context too helps me wrap my head around how it's enacted. FWIW my issue is very specifically w a particular segment of my academic field who are either actively doing this, or pretending it isn't 'relevant' - the discourse has always been awful
So let’s break this down a touch more via the Swedish angle because it has been a thing for years (and I’ll admit it’s a bit annoying to see people notice it only now but hey better late than never I suppose). The exact way this has gotten wielded is psychiatrists pondering statistics aloud
Exactly - autism diagnosis will be another hurdle.
DM me the best email to reach you on?
Right, fuck it. If you want to help write some sort of open letter or an article, do the DM slide. I have continual brain soup and if you've got an idea please say. If you don't have an idea but want to help also say.
Do let me know what you think!
I'm thinking this, along with some sort of ... template for the public consultation aspect, whenever that comes through. I'm not entirely sure where a letter would go tbh - maybe something aimed at MPs individually might be better. Or an article somewhere rather than a letter.
I know that I'm yelling about this to people who are going to largely agree with me. That's the point. We - the disability studies people who know exactly why this is bad - need to get our collective shit together. This is our are we the baddies moment.
Or: you can't get care because you're autistic and therefore can't understand what trans is. That's it. That's how it will be used.
You know how this will be used,right? Either you can't get on the wait list for gender-affirming medical care until you've been cleared for autism (but no funding to shorten those adult autism diagnosis wait lists!), good luck with adding a couple of extra years to that waiting time of several years
We - as a field - need to speak up. I know everything is on fucking fire right now. But this is something we actually have expertise in. We have ground to stand on here.
This can absolutely fuck off into the sun for a host of reasons, not least because it comes from the position that being trans is *bad* (and this gets backed up by the position that being autistic is bad too, it doesn't matter which way you come at it). This isn't a fucking neutral position any more
Hey, disability studies people. We need to talk about this: www.thepinknews.com/2025/04/28/n... - because we know where it's come from, right? You know that research behind this has come from people in our field, right?
Genuinely if I had been outflanked on the left by Tim Martin and Wetherspoons and I considered myself to be a left wing politician, I would resign and spend the rest of my career in a cave reflecting on how I let my brain get so rotted by columnists about who shits where
Pretty much. Or maybe: crip which is only known/understood through being crip.
I have still not decided if I like the blurring enough for a new portmanteau
Ontology is what we know (eg water is wet) and epistemology is the how we know it (eg empirical observation) - or ways of knowing. So cripistemology is crip ways of knowing. Crip-isto-ontology is a sort of ... crips know crip through doing/being crip
💯💯💯
Crip guests in my essay echo @emmas.bsky.social's "There is joy in the ashes of the future-not-to-be, there is pleasure in their discomfort with our joy and our rejection." Also online as a BSL video, with captions & audio description - and an embodied Footnote played by Deaf actor Ciaran Stewart.
As both 1 and 3, I'm sort of into this. I would love to persuade Sam to shit in a box, but he would rather hold it for *days*
... this is a magnificent idea (also, thank you!)
Oh no, I meant it in a very ... self-snarky way. I'm glad you liked the paper!
I am a Very Serious Academic
Thank you! 😊
Thank you! I recommend reading it with a biscuit.
I'm moderately proud of it, and very grateful to the editors of Feminist Theory for letting me fuck about with ideas. And whoever reviewed it and didn't call me a fuckwit immediately, they were all ace.
Lads, I am very rubbish at posting here, but: I wrote a thing, and it is now out with Feminist Theory. doi.org/10.1177/1464... - it's called The Necessary Pleasures of the Crip Killjoy and it's about thinking with brain fog and discomfort and violence and joy in refusal.
One thing that I noticed this time around is that the "discussion" of giving racists airtime (as a way to put people off) is apparently eternal.
Students largely horrified at the language, but they're about to be asked for modern-day equivalences...
Ending this week in Social Theory with "It Ain't Half Racist Mum" from Stuart Hall (and Box of Broadcasts) - as rounding up Hall's work on TV discourse, encoding/decoding.
Thank you! It definitely threw some of our more ... writing-first colleagues. But it was super fun and I've been using lots with students too.
You should read it (and the rest of the compassionate pedagogies section) if you want to think about how to give a shit about your students as whole people. You should read ours if you like the idea of doing this through the medium of felt tip pens.
And remember, Stock resigned voluntarily, after receiving the full & unconditional backing of the university. Possibly because she thought she was getting a new gig at the University of Grievance, Austin...
Disappeared Tufts Human Dev. PhD student Rumesya Ozturk is also a graduate of Teachers College - she’s a dev. psychologist studying children’s media & prosocial development. She also bakes without recipes and binge-watches cartoons. She is our colleague & she was abducted on the street w/ our tax $.
Magnificently, I have a publication out. Myself, Tamar MacLellan and Erika Hawkes wrote about what an arts approach did for us when talking about trauma in HE. It's in the Journal of Learning Development in HE: doi.org/10.47408/jld...
Oh this is a *really* good point! 🧵
Now taking suggestions for where I left my sunglasses.
We also wandered through gender and risk - and the impact of transition and hormones on risk-taking behaviours. Absolutely not where I planned to go - but sometimes the best bit is letting students play with ideas.
Today had one of those seminars which went off track from the beginning, but was nonetheless great. We should have talked about risk as social/cultural. And we sort of did - but we talked about risk vs fear, the orgasm gap, student loans, and crafting.
can Labour please, please just tot up the number of voters with a) more than ten million quid and b) less than ten million quid, and do the fucking maths on what the country would prefer.
Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Liz Kendall's speech today laid out plans to cut disability and sickness benefits by billions. ❌ No truly moral choice would leave disabled people without support designed to allow them to lead a dignified life, or facing hardship. 1/4
I just want a working meter. This is apparently too much to ask.
Today: trying to get my smart meter fixed, organising training, writing seminar. Maybe screaming into the void
Two templates - one for people who are directly affected and one for allies. Please write to your MP and let them know how immoral, counterproductive and devastating- these cuts will be www.inclusionlondon.org.uk/campaigns-an...
The scriptwriters for Doctor Odyssey are trying to make orcas the bad guys and it's not working.
Today's seminar discussed the selfie as cultural product and I am now going to crumble to dust
This is such a vital piece by @davehitchcock.bsky.social on the university funding crisis, which has been a decade in the making. www.historyworkshop.org.uk/education/a-...
I am now *that* person whose pets are busy being absolute clowns while I'm doing a Proper Teams Meeting. Muting myself because SQUONKY TOYS TIME.
We interrupt today's doom scrolling with this, which is very informative
Today I am panic-reading before reading group, meeting a dissertation student, and discussing research and teaching. And preparing for my mum's arrival tomorrow.
Once more, with feeling: bsky.app/profile/bcnj...
I am not above self-bribery. And I'm setting myself very mediocre targets. Though not the ambient sounds - I need something I'm really familiar with, early 2000s emo is usually the go to. I just don't wanna
Lads, what do you do when you can't procrastinate writing with lecture prep? SEND HELP. I might actually have to write.
Absolutely disgusting. It's ripping support from the most vulnerable. These people are unable to work because they are disabled. They've transformed disability welfare into a work benefit. This "Labour" government deserves to be annihilated. www.theguardian.com/society/2025...
Far too long - but this is an excellently trashy episode
Doctor Odyssey is back and they've gone in hard on the clichés. Which is just what today requires.
Lavender goes ok with tea but this seems wholly dreadful
Signs of spring: outside time for old dragons.
Delightful. Vague anxiety for no reason is exactly what I needed today.
So thrilled to say that my new article on the echoes of Section 28 in the moral panic around trans people in the UK is out now, along with the rest of the first issue of @genderandjustice.bsky.social ! doi.org/10.1332/3033...
Amazing! Brilliant news!
Disability admin
"if you can't be a good example, you'll have to be a terrible warning"
All of my advice to students should come with the disclaimer that I am very bad at following my own advice sometimes.
We've got support from the RGS to make this hybrid (in ways accessible to me!) - new deadline of midnight on the 7th March.
Went for a walk down Tan Y Bwlch, in the sunshine. Hoops enjoyed a paddle in the Ystwyth and the sea.
It's one of those things that I really like being able to do. My laundry is nearly dry!
Being able to hang laundry outside is far more pleasing that it should be
Sarah at the RGS was super helpful. Initially I couldn't see a way to make hybrid work in ways that didn't put enormous pressure on my co-organisers and require my job aide to do things not in her role.
We've got support from the RGS to make this hybrid (in ways accessible to me!) - new deadline of midnight on the 7th March.
I wholly avoid going to the GP unless absolutely necessary - phone appointments all the way!
For me, that was actually huge - because I've moved a lot since my initial diagnosis, I've not actually had specialist care for over a decade (and also because fibromyalgia is very ... uncared for). So everything has been me figuring it out for myself.
... was normal (yes, but let's get those newer pains checked just in case). It was reassuring to be told that I am doing ok as I am, that the issues I have are just fibromyalgia, that I'm doing the management right.
For context: the last time I engaged with a chronic pain clinic I was in a different place and my life was different - but now I've had fibromyalgia for over 15 years, and I figured it was time for a check in. I wanted to see if I had different options here (nope) or if what I was experiencing ....
Chronic pain clinics have changed a lot since 2014. Not so much in what they can do but the approach today was so very different. I came out feeling *heard*
The real divide between sociology and human geography is whether the theorists are wearing black polonecks or tweed.
THEY'RE GOING TO ISSUE PERMANENT VISA BANS TO TRANS VISITORS TO THE US. This isn't just for athletes. The directive as stated applies to all visa applications made by trans folks and declare it material fraud to use a different gender marker on applications. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
Hoops is attempting logic. Walkies is followed by the cat's dinner, which is followed by his dinner, so if he gets me to go outside quicker, his dinner will happen sooner. He is not a smart greyhound.
We've moved the deadline to Monday (3rd March) in recognition that we're not going to start making decisions over the weekend. And also my utter horror at realising March is *next week* and I am wholly unprepared for this fact.
*entirely* how I feel.
Me: today I am going to Do! things! off my to do list My brain: *magic roundabout theme*
It is truly amazing how no one seems to give a shit in media about how young women around the world are becoming ever more left wing.
I'm happy to have chats over DM/email - but we really welcome interdisciplinary work (as long as you think you fit in a geography-adjacent way), your rage and anger and exhaustion.
This will be an in-person session only due to limited availability of hybrid sessions. We welcome creative formats or approaches that can fit in a standard paper session. Please email your abstract (max 250 words) to Sinéad O’Connor ( sio13@aber.ac.uk) and Yvonne Ehrstein (yve@aber.ac.uk) by 28 Feb
We invite discussion of the emotional exhaustion of continuing to confront familiar research problems that fail to translate into tangible change, alongside the emotional exhaustion of research from a position of lived experience. (3/3)
on topics and problems that refuse to go away, despite relentless and repeated research programmes designed to foster change. (2/3)
My colleages and I are organising a panel at the RGS this summer - please share! CfP - Relentless injustice: trauma, exhaustion and researching zombie problems (or banging your head against a wall) We invite papers that consider the challenges, traumas & exhaustion of conducting research... (1/2)
Mine have all been fairly healthy - arthritis aside - but the teeth problems and the weird anxieties are absolutely down to care of their racing kennels. It has improved since my first hound in 2006, but they need so much better
I'm ok with there being fewer greyhounds, despite how much I love having them. People will still breed them for show/pets - hopefully they will be better cared for that way.
This is hideous. There's no clarity or transparency, or indeed any attempt to create them. There's no sense of what a university is *for* - or of any care for workers or students. It has my stomach in knots just reading it.
That's a postdoc surely
Apparently I have got the one greyhound who doesn't give a fig about rain and would very much like a long walk thank you.
Fucking *finally*. Everything Dyfrig says too, but it's something
Watching Wisting and there's a character called Clifford who is not a big red dog. This is a continuous disappointment
Today I phrased my seminar discussion questions very formally on the slide and then asked the students "is Giddens talking shit here?" because I continue to be a gremlin.
🚨Attention UCU members in HE: we have started an open letter for you to sign in support of a motion we're bringing to the meeting on Weds 19th which calls for a focus on defending jobs, reforming HE, & calling off a national ballot. docs.google.com/forms/u/1/d/...
He clearly likes the rain! Hoops had to be told not to put his head in the oven the other day.
Oh, I am not complaining of his silliness. He is excellent and silly. I do need him to leave the tortoise the fuck alone, though.
He's the silliest creature.
