Thanks for posting this and for saying the hard truths that some of us are too polite to say!! Yesterday I saw a lady walking on a huge deserted beach wearing a surgical face mask and I burst out laughing as I walked past her from a distance.
It’s all about the illusion, not the reality.
It’s all about social perception, not biology.
No wonder people on the (so-called) right think that woke culture is superficial, performative and hypocritical. They aren’t entirely wrong.
Unfortunately, that also means they dismiss real forms of oppression like racism and sexism, labelling victims of sexual violence as hysterical / attention-seeking (i.e. fake) etc. Meanwhile, they claim oppression language for themselves too, by lamenting how much white people / men are being oppressed these days…which I suppose in a capitalist society where <1% controls the planet is also true, but still!
The picture you’ve posted in this blog so perfectly captures it: real, fleshy, complex human beings are reduced to caricature, a cartoon, an assemblage of body parts (that can be swapped around at will!), and reduced to laundry list of identity labels (brown, queer, big bodied, disability, gender non-conforming) that screams “BE KIND TO ME, I AM HURTING/FRAGILE OK?”
I find it bizarre how people are embellishing the visibility of their oppressed identities (perceived or not) since if they are truly oppressed, you might not want people to know what that identity is if it’s not visible. People can obviously see I am: 1) young, 2) brown, 3) female, so I have enough reasons for them to dismiss me in meetings, at work, in conversations without also revealing my sexuality or my disability. I don’t need people to feel *more* sorry for me or treat me like a delicate fragile flower that’s going to burst into tears at the slightest thing or further dismiss my opinions just because I’m too weird or put my opinions on a pedestal because I’m winning the “Oppression Olympics”. Golly me, if I think I have an identity/beliefs that are going to get me slammed in public and treated like crap, I tend to hide it – not flaunt it (as nice as being “out” about them would be lol).
The virtue-signalling does seem more about faith than facts, a religious belief than reality – so well put here: “So, the mask is just another element of the whole Queer Culture mentality, which polices people to follow certain practices and beliefs, as if they are worshipping an invisible God.” Amen!
Good on you for taking care of your health with sunshine, good food, exercise etc. During covid I wondered what became of my leftie progressive friends who were all about systems thinking and systems change (as opposed to the individualism of capitalism). The medico-pharmaceutical model is predicated on reductionist beliefs around one cause = one disease = one cure* which doesn’t make a lot of sense from a whole-systems perspective but does make a lot of money!
And it’s further predicated on the aggressive denial of women and Indigenous people’s knowledge about traditional herbs, holistic healing (cue witch hunts) and subjugation and dismissal of nature (because medicine / because tech innovation). A veritable concoction of racist, sexist, technocratic ideology! The very ideology that apparently the mask-wearing queer people are purporting to reject…
The other issue I have with the masks is the war mentality it symbolises. You’re either with us or against us. You’re either a germ-fearing citizen or an irresponsible granny killer. You’re either virtuous or you’re virulent. Science doesn’t matter. Facts don’t matter. The first casualty of war, after all, is truth. If you ask me to take off the mask, you are literally KILLING me. By wearing a mask – even in nature, even in deserted spaces, even after the pandemic is officially over – I am SAVING LIVES. You either care about people or you’re a dangerous murderer who should be locked up (quarantined).
For those of my leftie progressive friends who were so supposedly anti-war (peace and love hippies), it is difficult to see them subscribe to war ideology when it suits them. While most of the queer people are probably not wearing the masks out of an overt war mentality, it’s covert – it’s that they’re the good guys (fighting off the bad guys not wearing masks, or bad guys = germs) or the (potential) victims.
Urgh.
*I understand people are going to panic if I upset their cherished reductionist models. As a biologist, I hate to admit that we actually don’t know as much about the human body and disease as we pretend we do, and most of our reductionist models cannot be verified in reality using the scientific method so remain pure speculation. Try psychiatry first – the theory that an imbalance of molecules in the brain causing mental illness never been proven in reality (but does rake in eye-watering profits!). Some good reads on this are Johann Hari’s "Lost Connections" and feminist psychiatrist blog What Would Jess Say:
I'm resonating with all your thoughts here! 🌺 Thank you so much for sharing. I too, often think about how the conservative/non-woke movement, and many "liberal" gender-critical people have also dismissed valid concerns about racism, misogyny, and homophobia. I encounter this with several people who enjoy my writing, and then dismiss some of the other things I have to share about my experience.
This is one example of how making oppression into a trend really only ends up hurting those who actually experience it. And this also goes for people who are legitimately disabled, suffer from chronic illness, etc. The commercialization of these things makes it so that if you want support, you have to go into these gender ideology-infested spaces that are unhealthy in different ways.
LOL @ the masked lady walking on the beach. I laugh sometimes too, somehow it's a really annoying sight to me, and even more irritating to speak to these people. But a lot of people are mentally unwell, and masks are just one way that it has manifested in this day and age.
“I am healthy, and I trust in my body’s ability to fight illness. I do not conceptualize my body as a walking petri dish.” -thank FUCK for this.
I’m so grateful for your voice and boldness.
A few weeks ago a new family moved into my neighborhood..three young kids. They were playing with a ball in the front yard and one of them was wearing a mask. Outside, in their yard surrounded by their own family.
I’ve noticed an uptick in mask wearing again and I have been wondering why. I don’t wear them unless I am in close proximity to people whom I can sense are consumed with fear.
Hi, just commenting to say that I wear my mask outdoors on windy days because I live in a place with very poor air quality, but I remove it when I enter a building or vehicle. My allergies explode if I don’t wear the mask on bad air days.
Although, I only do this rarely because I people tend to sneer at mask-wearers in any situation in my city. I often wonder if they think I’m wearing it as a lib/queer statement, and why it’s so hard for them to imagine some people just suffer from bronchitis and asthma.
I am a visibly gender-nonconforming woman, so the snap judgement is probably influenced by that. Just adding my perspective.
Hi, Thanks for sharing. I see regular people wearing masks in other situations and I assume they are not doing it for the reasons I've outlined here.
For example, it's common for me to see Uber drivers wear masks, and I figure that maybe they are taking reasonable precautions to protect themselves from covid or occasional bad smells from passengers.
Some people are going to judge you for the way you care for your health because of this stupid trend, and it's unfair to people like you who use masks for their intended purpose. Ultimately, a culture that glorifies illness ends up marginalizing those who are actually ill or disabled.
“Ultimately, a culture that glorifies illness ends up marginalizing those who are actually ill or disabled.” This certainly seems to be the case with autism! All we ever hear about these days are people with “high-functioning” autism who nevertheless grow up to be lawyers or doctors or whatever. Not the ones who are unlikely to ever be able to live independently or hold down a job regardless of what accommodations they get.
I wear a K-95 mask when raking leaves. Developed an allergy and ended up with a week long asthma cough. Doesn’t happen if I use the mask. Luckily, we found some really good ones that are comfortable I can forget I even have it on.
The thing with the canes and walkers was new to me. So, it’s ok to basically walk around in disabled-face? My daughter will be glad to hear that her crutches (which she uses because if you take them away from her she falls right down) are now a fashion statement among weirdos. Haven’t disabled people suffered enough? And don’t get me started about people with self-diagnosed ‘illnesses’ calling each other Crip. What the actual fuck?
It's not often that I see anyone wearing a mask in my neck of the woods these days, but when I do there's a solid 30-50% chance they've got their nose hanging out, which defeats the entire purpose. Unless, of course, the true purpose has nothing to do with disease control and everything to do with the wearer wanting to be seen wearing the correct accessory, as you say.
Interesting take and i see your point. My experiences and observations tell me something very different though. I still know and interact with a few people who never stopped wearing mask and while a couple of them do identify as they/them and other nonsense youth trends, i think it really comes down to they feel theyre ugly and they enjoy being able to cover their face. I hate saying that they all are, but they really are all very unattractive. One has horrible teeth, one has bad acne, one is just a very unattractive woman, etc. It makes me sad that they feel the need to do that because id rather they just be at peace with their appearance but i think the mask gave many people the out they always wanted to cover their faces from the world. Theyll still expose it from time to time but they just feel more comfortable controlling for how long they have to be available to see.
Thank you so much for this. As soon as I heard about the "pandemic," I assumed it was a bio-weapons release, before I even knew that Wuhan had a bio-weapons lab connected to Fauci. The mask wearing and bullying drove me nuts, even before the vax bullying began. (I have to add that I do have friends who were wearing masks outside before Covid with good reason, but most are just terrified or trendy.) Where I live, at the few Lesbian events I know about, like the important Queer Women of Color Film Festival (open to everyone), you are not allowed to go without a mask and being vaxxed. Even now. And this isolates Lesbians who are already so isolated since our last spaces were taken over by men. (When the vax first appeared and I refused it for many good reasons, I was told by a musician at a dance I went to that I should go home and never leave unless I was vaxxed, and then she ran across the room.) I guess I should still be inside, but if the murders in my neighborhood don't stop me from going out, nothing will. (I finally did get covid from new dentist and it was milder than any cold or flu I've ever had and it lasted a day.)
The only thing that is worrying for me is that, as a working class Butch who lives below the poverty line and is 74 and has been disabled with chronic illness since I became 30, being ill has never meant being trendy or treated better or fitting in, or anything remotely positive. Either it's ignored by most friends who keep telling me to push a bit more (which is part of why I never recovered) or how they think I'm so healthy. I haven't seen anyone truly disabled get anything other than harassment or ridicule or weird fear (like the friend who after letting me hold onto her arm for a few seconds when I was walking down from an uneven trail, then sprayed her jacket with disinfectant. She also will never get into my car or have me in hers, so we drive separately for hours often once a week. She does stay overnight and eat out, so I wonder why I'm more scary.) I believe you that some are making being disabled/ill trendy, but I'm wondering who. Perhaps the most privileged? When I broke my ankle a few months ago, I continued going out without crutches or a cane.
Anyway, otherwise, I love what you've written. Below are two articles I wrote about masks before the vax that is not a vaccine appeared:
Hey just want to say sorry to hear about your experiences and very interesting to e-meet a radical feminist lesbian who resisted mandates and masks — that must really put you in the minority of a minority, and probably detested on both sides! Must be a lonely place to be. How did you cope? How are you doing now that everyone has forgotten about covid so doesn’t want to hear your experiences anymore?
Also wanted to say that it seems there’s this funny paradoxical thing happening where illness is 1) abhorred (the way people glance away from people in wheelchairs as if they might “catch” a disability…and the way people who got sick for whatever reason during covid were vilified and seen as potential bioterrorists esp in countries with zero covid policies) while also simultaneously 2) revered, because it grants you access to physical and non-physical resources like $$, healthcare (as rubbish as that may be), and social concern.
Although I suppose it probably only is “revered” if you’re objectively young, fit and healthy (just trying on masks as a fashion statement) and ideally also queer, brown and so forth.
Thanks. Actually, there are a lot of Lesbian Separatists and Radical Feminist Lesbian who also don't believe the covid and vaxxing hype and won't wear masks either. I get angina when I am pressured to, like at a doctor's office, so still won't wear one. But it's been hard with friends who I call "Believers," and I've lost a lot of friends over this issue.
This is an article I wrote about the mask bullying in 2020, before the vax bullying:
Yes I did read this ages ago when you posted your first comment in here! Good to know there’s lesbian separatists and radical feminists who didn’t believe the propaganda 😊
I am surprised that this group, perpetually concerned with and policing the language, uses the word "Crip". It kinda sounds pejorative. Since when is "cripple" ok to use for a handicapped person?
‘Crip’ is certainly pejorative. My daughter is a college professor - her field is Psychology and she occasionally teaches a Disabilities Studies class and is working on setting up a DS minor for her university. She is also disabled with Cerebral Palsy and uses crutches or a wheelchair for mobility. While some disabled people may use ‘cripple’ amongst themselves, it is definitely a slur when used by anyone else. For able-bodied people to embrace it and ‘take it back’ on behalf of disabled people is mind-blowingly disgusting.
My grandfather lost a leg in 1917 at the age of 20. Until his death in 1975, I gather, he regularly referred to himself as a”cripple”. Not with self-pity or shame or irony – it was just the standard word back then for someone physically disabled.
I don’t think he’d have used it if he’d known people found it offensive. But he’d have hated the idea of kids with nothing wrong with them taking the label for themselves.
Is there nothing these degenerates won't sink to stealing?! Queer crip fashion. Ffs. Fuck off and have some respect for actual disabled people. Arseholes.
You forgot to mention that a lot of radical trans activists hide their faces behind masks when they violently disrupt gender critical events like Let Women Speak and attack lesbians, women and girls who stand up for our sex based rights to our own spaces.
I'm gay and remember before queerness had such mass appeal and before it was largely straight women who decided they were 'queer'. 'Queering' something, such as the mask, attempts to politicize it, and like with so much conceptual art, comes with a vapid art statement decreeing its new found meaning. nothing is to trivial for these people.
This essay captures so well a number of thoughts that have been on my mind but I haven’t been able to articulate. It’s funny how “queer” and “neurodivergent” are these convenient categories of the oppressed that people can self-identify into and no one else is allowed to question. And for those who want to virtue-signal without going even that far, there’s always “ally.” (Which I think you also covered but maybe without using the actual word.)
Good article, as this needs saying. Almost everyone I meet these days is "autistic", "ADHD" or otherwise "neurodivergent". It's really rather tedious and grating, particularly whilst genuinely disabled people (of whom I am one) continue to be generally socially isolated and kept at arms' length.
The silliest example I can give is of the extremely socially adept and highly functioning idiot who insisted I give her certain details about myself. When I refused to do so (she hardly knew me), she whined, "but I have a neurodiversity which means I won't be able to cope if you don't tell me!".
However, unless I missed it, one vital thing the article fails to mention is class. It has to be acknowledged that being "disabled", "neurodivergent" etc is now, along with being of a 'different' "gender", a means by which quite privileged people can pretend to be part of an 'oppressed group'. Such people of middle class and above co-opt everything, and they won't be satisfied until they control absolutely all social territory.
Thanks for posting this and for saying the hard truths that some of us are too polite to say!! Yesterday I saw a lady walking on a huge deserted beach wearing a surgical face mask and I burst out laughing as I walked past her from a distance.
It’s all about the illusion, not the reality.
It’s all about social perception, not biology.
No wonder people on the (so-called) right think that woke culture is superficial, performative and hypocritical. They aren’t entirely wrong.
Unfortunately, that also means they dismiss real forms of oppression like racism and sexism, labelling victims of sexual violence as hysterical / attention-seeking (i.e. fake) etc. Meanwhile, they claim oppression language for themselves too, by lamenting how much white people / men are being oppressed these days…which I suppose in a capitalist society where <1% controls the planet is also true, but still!
The picture you’ve posted in this blog so perfectly captures it: real, fleshy, complex human beings are reduced to caricature, a cartoon, an assemblage of body parts (that can be swapped around at will!), and reduced to laundry list of identity labels (brown, queer, big bodied, disability, gender non-conforming) that screams “BE KIND TO ME, I AM HURTING/FRAGILE OK?”
I find it bizarre how people are embellishing the visibility of their oppressed identities (perceived or not) since if they are truly oppressed, you might not want people to know what that identity is if it’s not visible. People can obviously see I am: 1) young, 2) brown, 3) female, so I have enough reasons for them to dismiss me in meetings, at work, in conversations without also revealing my sexuality or my disability. I don’t need people to feel *more* sorry for me or treat me like a delicate fragile flower that’s going to burst into tears at the slightest thing or further dismiss my opinions just because I’m too weird or put my opinions on a pedestal because I’m winning the “Oppression Olympics”. Golly me, if I think I have an identity/beliefs that are going to get me slammed in public and treated like crap, I tend to hide it – not flaunt it (as nice as being “out” about them would be lol).
The virtue-signalling does seem more about faith than facts, a religious belief than reality – so well put here: “So, the mask is just another element of the whole Queer Culture mentality, which polices people to follow certain practices and beliefs, as if they are worshipping an invisible God.” Amen!
Good on you for taking care of your health with sunshine, good food, exercise etc. During covid I wondered what became of my leftie progressive friends who were all about systems thinking and systems change (as opposed to the individualism of capitalism). The medico-pharmaceutical model is predicated on reductionist beliefs around one cause = one disease = one cure* which doesn’t make a lot of sense from a whole-systems perspective but does make a lot of money!
And it’s further predicated on the aggressive denial of women and Indigenous people’s knowledge about traditional herbs, holistic healing (cue witch hunts) and subjugation and dismissal of nature (because medicine / because tech innovation). A veritable concoction of racist, sexist, technocratic ideology! The very ideology that apparently the mask-wearing queer people are purporting to reject…
The other issue I have with the masks is the war mentality it symbolises. You’re either with us or against us. You’re either a germ-fearing citizen or an irresponsible granny killer. You’re either virtuous or you’re virulent. Science doesn’t matter. Facts don’t matter. The first casualty of war, after all, is truth. If you ask me to take off the mask, you are literally KILLING me. By wearing a mask – even in nature, even in deserted spaces, even after the pandemic is officially over – I am SAVING LIVES. You either care about people or you’re a dangerous murderer who should be locked up (quarantined).
For those of my leftie progressive friends who were so supposedly anti-war (peace and love hippies), it is difficult to see them subscribe to war ideology when it suits them. While most of the queer people are probably not wearing the masks out of an overt war mentality, it’s covert – it’s that they’re the good guys (fighting off the bad guys not wearing masks, or bad guys = germs) or the (potential) victims.
Urgh.
*I understand people are going to panic if I upset their cherished reductionist models. As a biologist, I hate to admit that we actually don’t know as much about the human body and disease as we pretend we do, and most of our reductionist models cannot be verified in reality using the scientific method so remain pure speculation. Try psychiatry first – the theory that an imbalance of molecules in the brain causing mental illness never been proven in reality (but does rake in eye-watering profits!). Some good reads on this are Johann Hari’s "Lost Connections" and feminist psychiatrist blog What Would Jess Say:
https://whatwouldjesssay.substack.com/p/4-ways-mental-health-is-misused-in/
https://whatwouldjesssay.substack.com/p/what-do-i-think-of-neurodiversity/
https://whatwouldjesssay.substack.com/p/lets-apply-sagans-razor-to-psychiatry/
I'm resonating with all your thoughts here! 🌺 Thank you so much for sharing. I too, often think about how the conservative/non-woke movement, and many "liberal" gender-critical people have also dismissed valid concerns about racism, misogyny, and homophobia. I encounter this with several people who enjoy my writing, and then dismiss some of the other things I have to share about my experience.
This is one example of how making oppression into a trend really only ends up hurting those who actually experience it. And this also goes for people who are legitimately disabled, suffer from chronic illness, etc. The commercialization of these things makes it so that if you want support, you have to go into these gender ideology-infested spaces that are unhealthy in different ways.
LOL @ the masked lady walking on the beach. I laugh sometimes too, somehow it's a really annoying sight to me, and even more irritating to speak to these people. But a lot of people are mentally unwell, and masks are just one way that it has manifested in this day and age.
“I am healthy, and I trust in my body’s ability to fight illness. I do not conceptualize my body as a walking petri dish.” -thank FUCK for this.
I’m so grateful for your voice and boldness.
A few weeks ago a new family moved into my neighborhood..three young kids. They were playing with a ball in the front yard and one of them was wearing a mask. Outside, in their yard surrounded by their own family.
I’ve noticed an uptick in mask wearing again and I have been wondering why. I don’t wear them unless I am in close proximity to people whom I can sense are consumed with fear.
Thank you Sara 🌺🙏🏾🌺
Hi, just commenting to say that I wear my mask outdoors on windy days because I live in a place with very poor air quality, but I remove it when I enter a building or vehicle. My allergies explode if I don’t wear the mask on bad air days.
Although, I only do this rarely because I people tend to sneer at mask-wearers in any situation in my city. I often wonder if they think I’m wearing it as a lib/queer statement, and why it’s so hard for them to imagine some people just suffer from bronchitis and asthma.
I am a visibly gender-nonconforming woman, so the snap judgement is probably influenced by that. Just adding my perspective.
Hi, Thanks for sharing. I see regular people wearing masks in other situations and I assume they are not doing it for the reasons I've outlined here.
For example, it's common for me to see Uber drivers wear masks, and I figure that maybe they are taking reasonable precautions to protect themselves from covid or occasional bad smells from passengers.
Some people are going to judge you for the way you care for your health because of this stupid trend, and it's unfair to people like you who use masks for their intended purpose. Ultimately, a culture that glorifies illness ends up marginalizing those who are actually ill or disabled.
“Ultimately, a culture that glorifies illness ends up marginalizing those who are actually ill or disabled.” This certainly seems to be the case with autism! All we ever hear about these days are people with “high-functioning” autism who nevertheless grow up to be lawyers or doctors or whatever. Not the ones who are unlikely to ever be able to live independently or hold down a job regardless of what accommodations they get.
I wear a K-95 mask when raking leaves. Developed an allergy and ended up with a week long asthma cough. Doesn’t happen if I use the mask. Luckily, we found some really good ones that are comfortable I can forget I even have it on.
That is the kind of thing those masks are actually designed for. Good job putting it to its proper use.
When I walked into a bookstore this morning and saw the clerk wearing one, I promptly left.
Yep, my daughter wears a mask outdoors during high pollen season .
I think the real reason — not mentioned here — is that the masks make it slightly harder to clock someone’s gender.
In my experience, it’s the trans camp that does this harder than anyone else. And I strongly suspect that’s why.
The thing with the canes and walkers was new to me. So, it’s ok to basically walk around in disabled-face? My daughter will be glad to hear that her crutches (which she uses because if you take them away from her she falls right down) are now a fashion statement among weirdos. Haven’t disabled people suffered enough? And don’t get me started about people with self-diagnosed ‘illnesses’ calling each other Crip. What the actual fuck?
they can become impromptu weapons as well
Very true. In fact, my daughter frequently says, ‘Shut up, or I’m gonna hit you with my crutch.’
Michael Jackson was the first celebrity to affect wearing a surgical face mask out in public. He was definitely a ´queer´ and more besides. Go figure.
Also very likely an early victim of “puberty blockers,” allegedly administered by his father to keep that signature falsetto voice from cracking
It's not often that I see anyone wearing a mask in my neck of the woods these days, but when I do there's a solid 30-50% chance they've got their nose hanging out, which defeats the entire purpose. Unless, of course, the true purpose has nothing to do with disease control and everything to do with the wearer wanting to be seen wearing the correct accessory, as you say.
Interesting take and i see your point. My experiences and observations tell me something very different though. I still know and interact with a few people who never stopped wearing mask and while a couple of them do identify as they/them and other nonsense youth trends, i think it really comes down to they feel theyre ugly and they enjoy being able to cover their face. I hate saying that they all are, but they really are all very unattractive. One has horrible teeth, one has bad acne, one is just a very unattractive woman, etc. It makes me sad that they feel the need to do that because id rather they just be at peace with their appearance but i think the mask gave many people the out they always wanted to cover their faces from the world. Theyll still expose it from time to time but they just feel more comfortable controlling for how long they have to be available to see.
I´ve noticed surgical masks are now also very popular with drug dealers and similar ´entrepreneurs´.
Thank you so much for this. As soon as I heard about the "pandemic," I assumed it was a bio-weapons release, before I even knew that Wuhan had a bio-weapons lab connected to Fauci. The mask wearing and bullying drove me nuts, even before the vax bullying began. (I have to add that I do have friends who were wearing masks outside before Covid with good reason, but most are just terrified or trendy.) Where I live, at the few Lesbian events I know about, like the important Queer Women of Color Film Festival (open to everyone), you are not allowed to go without a mask and being vaxxed. Even now. And this isolates Lesbians who are already so isolated since our last spaces were taken over by men. (When the vax first appeared and I refused it for many good reasons, I was told by a musician at a dance I went to that I should go home and never leave unless I was vaxxed, and then she ran across the room.) I guess I should still be inside, but if the murders in my neighborhood don't stop me from going out, nothing will. (I finally did get covid from new dentist and it was milder than any cold or flu I've ever had and it lasted a day.)
The only thing that is worrying for me is that, as a working class Butch who lives below the poverty line and is 74 and has been disabled with chronic illness since I became 30, being ill has never meant being trendy or treated better or fitting in, or anything remotely positive. Either it's ignored by most friends who keep telling me to push a bit more (which is part of why I never recovered) or how they think I'm so healthy. I haven't seen anyone truly disabled get anything other than harassment or ridicule or weird fear (like the friend who after letting me hold onto her arm for a few seconds when I was walking down from an uneven trail, then sprayed her jacket with disinfectant. She also will never get into my car or have me in hers, so we drive separately for hours often once a week. She does stay overnight and eat out, so I wonder why I'm more scary.) I believe you that some are making being disabled/ill trendy, but I'm wondering who. Perhaps the most privileged? When I broke my ankle a few months ago, I continued going out without crutches or a cane.
Anyway, otherwise, I love what you've written. Below are two articles I wrote about masks before the vax that is not a vaccine appeared:
https://keepingreallesbianfeminismsimple.wordpress.com/2020/07/08/fear-health-masks-and-lies/
https://keepingreallesbianfeminismsimple.wordpress.com/2020/08/09/why-arent-the-experts-telli
Hey just want to say sorry to hear about your experiences and very interesting to e-meet a radical feminist lesbian who resisted mandates and masks — that must really put you in the minority of a minority, and probably detested on both sides! Must be a lonely place to be. How did you cope? How are you doing now that everyone has forgotten about covid so doesn’t want to hear your experiences anymore?
Also wanted to say that it seems there’s this funny paradoxical thing happening where illness is 1) abhorred (the way people glance away from people in wheelchairs as if they might “catch” a disability…and the way people who got sick for whatever reason during covid were vilified and seen as potential bioterrorists esp in countries with zero covid policies) while also simultaneously 2) revered, because it grants you access to physical and non-physical resources like $$, healthcare (as rubbish as that may be), and social concern.
Although I suppose it probably only is “revered” if you’re objectively young, fit and healthy (just trying on masks as a fashion statement) and ideally also queer, brown and so forth.
Thanks. Actually, there are a lot of Lesbian Separatists and Radical Feminist Lesbian who also don't believe the covid and vaxxing hype and won't wear masks either. I get angina when I am pressured to, like at a doctor's office, so still won't wear one. But it's been hard with friends who I call "Believers," and I've lost a lot of friends over this issue.
This is an article I wrote about the mask bullying in 2020, before the vax bullying:
FEAR, HEALTH, MASKS, AND LIES
https://keepingreallesbianfeminismsimple.wordpress.com/2020/07/08/fear-health-masks-and-lies/
Yes I did read this ages ago when you posted your first comment in here! Good to know there’s lesbian separatists and radical feminists who didn’t believe the propaganda 😊
I am surprised that this group, perpetually concerned with and policing the language, uses the word "Crip". It kinda sounds pejorative. Since when is "cripple" ok to use for a handicapped person?
‘Crip’ is certainly pejorative. My daughter is a college professor - her field is Psychology and she occasionally teaches a Disabilities Studies class and is working on setting up a DS minor for her university. She is also disabled with Cerebral Palsy and uses crutches or a wheelchair for mobility. While some disabled people may use ‘cripple’ amongst themselves, it is definitely a slur when used by anyone else. For able-bodied people to embrace it and ‘take it back’ on behalf of disabled people is mind-blowingly disgusting.
It’s like repurposing Queer as a catchall for gender nonconforming, trans and LGB?
My grandfather lost a leg in 1917 at the age of 20. Until his death in 1975, I gather, he regularly referred to himself as a”cripple”. Not with self-pity or shame or irony – it was just the standard word back then for someone physically disabled.
I don’t think he’d have used it if he’d known people found it offensive. But he’d have hated the idea of kids with nothing wrong with them taking the label for themselves.
Is there nothing these degenerates won't sink to stealing?! Queer crip fashion. Ffs. Fuck off and have some respect for actual disabled people. Arseholes.
Geez, that’s a full on respirator.
Yes. The woman in the photo actually hosted an event that required everyone to wear a respirator-it was on one of the flyers lol
You forgot to mention that a lot of radical trans activists hide their faces behind masks when they violently disrupt gender critical events like Let Women Speak and attack lesbians, women and girls who stand up for our sex based rights to our own spaces.
Claudia
I'm gay and remember before queerness had such mass appeal and before it was largely straight women who decided they were 'queer'. 'Queering' something, such as the mask, attempts to politicize it, and like with so much conceptual art, comes with a vapid art statement decreeing its new found meaning. nothing is to trivial for these people.
This essay captures so well a number of thoughts that have been on my mind but I haven’t been able to articulate. It’s funny how “queer” and “neurodivergent” are these convenient categories of the oppressed that people can self-identify into and no one else is allowed to question. And for those who want to virtue-signal without going even that far, there’s always “ally.” (Which I think you also covered but maybe without using the actual word.)
Good article, as this needs saying. Almost everyone I meet these days is "autistic", "ADHD" or otherwise "neurodivergent". It's really rather tedious and grating, particularly whilst genuinely disabled people (of whom I am one) continue to be generally socially isolated and kept at arms' length.
The silliest example I can give is of the extremely socially adept and highly functioning idiot who insisted I give her certain details about myself. When I refused to do so (she hardly knew me), she whined, "but I have a neurodiversity which means I won't be able to cope if you don't tell me!".
However, unless I missed it, one vital thing the article fails to mention is class. It has to be acknowledged that being "disabled", "neurodivergent" etc is now, along with being of a 'different' "gender", a means by which quite privileged people can pretend to be part of an 'oppressed group'. Such people of middle class and above co-opt everything, and they won't be satisfied until they control absolutely all social territory.
Oh, and people requesting/demanding each others' pronouns, and those complying with such requests/demands, are (usually unwittingly) participating in an occult ritual: https://www.abebooks.co.uk/9781974121113/Occult-Roots-Postgenderism-History-Psychiatry-1974121119/plp