rae-rae arts sometimes

A while ago, I did a painting inspired by one of my favorite books, Uprooted (by Naomi Novik).

A few hours after I posted it, I decided I hated it.

Does anyone else know in their bones that Sarkan is autistic?

The whole attitude to magic, the social issues being mistaken for rudeness/snobbery, the complete lack of understanding of what other people think until it's explained to him (re: kidnapping girls my dude, it's bad...!), the particularity about appearance and who does what??

Also!

So

I'm a non-binary transgender person in Scotland.

If you don't know what I'm about to talk about, let me tell you.

> (this is to space out the text for anyone who struggles to read big blocks of things, like me)

The SCOTTISH GOVERNMENT passed a law that let's 16 year olds self identify their gender.

The law would have gender dysphoria not be something that you need to be diagnosed by a Doctor.

A transgender person would only have to wait 3 months and *not* 2 years to have lived as their preferred gender.

This law has not been put in place yet.

And it might never.

>

BECAUSE LONDON'S GOVERNMENT DECIDED TO NOT ALLOW THE BILL.

Their 'reasons' for this include:

• They do not believe 16 years old have the capability to understand what they want to do with their bodies

• They believe people could use the identity of being a Transgender Woman to harm Women in public places/single sex places

• They believe that Immigrants could come to the United Kingdom and harm Women in public places/single sex places

• This law could conflict with the laws of the United Kingdom

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Now my REASONS for being angry, for thinking this argument is completely foolish, is as follows:

• Within the United Kingdom, 16 year olds are trusted with their bodies when it comes to; Being a soldier, having sex and having children

• If this argument of "these group of people could harm our women" doesn't sound familiar, then look into any part of history that involve people being discriminated against, it isn't that hard to find

• If the London Government worry so much for people of the female sex, THEN GET BETTER SECURITY. DO NOT BLAME THE CRIMES OF CRUEL PERVERTS WHO WANT POWER OVER SOMEONE, ON ENTIRE GROUPS OF PEOPLE

• "This law could conflict with the laws of the United Kingdom" Dude. WE, AS IN THE SCOTTISH GOVERNMENT, **VOTED DEMOCRATICALLY** TO HAVE THIS LAW PASS **IN SCOTLAND!!!** NOT ANYWHERE ELSE! Y'all can handle your own laws, just keep your hands off ours

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They are fools.

Simply because they have demonstrated many things that is more telling of themselves than anyone else:

• They will use whatever *excuses* they want to have things go their way (not surprising in government but also yes it surprised me)

• The London Government abused it's apparent 'equal power with Scotland' to tell us that they can and will, in fact, take away the laws we pass for their liking

• They have shown to be Transphobic, Racist and Sexist (towards people born Male and Female)

• This is not democracy

• This is OR SHOULD BE illegal, they did not vote on this, they just said "no"

• And the thing the London/England Government fear the most; this will *definitely*, if they do not undo this or 'at least' come to an agreement; DEFINITELY make us Scots want to be *independent* from them

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Thank you for reading this far.

I've never done such a long post about such a serious topic before.

To all the Scots, the English and Trans people reading this who are also angry, upset or even scared of this situation; know this, have faith and fight for this law. I am fighting for the law we pass to be returned. I hope it does, so that it can be a domino affect and get this bill talked about for the rest of the United Kingdom, where it could be treated with Democracy instead of all this bullshit.

Anyone who is outside of the United Kingdom, thank you again for taking the time to read this.

All of you have my internet hugs x

>

If you agree that this bill should not have been passed, if you agree with the reasons the London Government gave

You’ll hear a lot of teachers in the coming days and weeks say they don’t want to strike, or they feel guilt about striking. I’ve thought about it, and I want to strike, and I don’t feel guilty, and I think I owe it to students to strike. Maybe not the ones I teach now, but the ones I might teach in five years time.

I owe it to some of the Y7s, 8s and 9s I taught last year who were deeply passionate about science. In particular, I’m think of the Y7s who loved our space topic, and may never get taught by a qualified physics teacher. I’m also thinking about the sort of country they’ll grow up in, the opportunities they’ll have and the future they deserve.

I can write some arguments within the liberal, capitalist context we live in,  for improving education, and specifically why pay and working conditions need to be improved for teachers and why striking is our only option. I know that’s not what a lot of you follow me for, but they may be persuasive if you know teachers or want to talk to people about why they should support the teacher strikes.

1)     There is a national shortage of teachers. This is a fact- we know a large number of teachers do not stay in the profession long term- 1/3 of teachers who trained in the last 10 years are no longer teaching. Other research suggests many of these teachers quit in the first 5 years of teaching. This year, we have struggled to recruit across secondary subjects. In subjects like maths, science, MFL, geography and more, the situation is especially dire- but this crisis is even starting to impact primary schools now. First and foremost, students are going without qualified, subject specialist teachers. In other professions, the Tories acknowledge high pay is needed to recruit suitable staff. Why not teaching- which after all requires a specialist degree and often a post graduate qualification too.

2)     This doesn’t just hurt individual students, it hurts the whole country, because it leaves us with a lack of people who are capable of becoming doctors, dentists, engineers, entering other health care professions, working in the STEM fields that are meant to drive our economy. Investing in education grows the economy long term, and is better for society as a whole.

3)     But it does also hurt the social mobility of individual students. Richer families can pay tutors, or go private to make up for deficiencies in teaching. But those from low income families can’t. Few parents have the time or ability to bridge the gap themselves.

4)     Furthermore, if we think about really vulnerable students- who, make no mistake will be used as a weapon against teachers during the strike- they benefit from well funded schools. They benefit from having consistent adults in their lives. They often take a long time to form relationships with staff. A revolving door of supply teachers (which is the reality in many secondary schools) really hurts them.

5)     Teachers struggle to negotiate pay for themselves. Many schools will baulk at the idea of a teacher negotiating on their own pay, and take deep offense, as if the idea of negotiating pay in a capitalist society when you have an unusual skill is totally unreasonable. So, teachers can only negotiate pay on a national scale. And because the government won’t sit down and negotiate, the only thing we can do is take industrial action.

6)     Ultimately, schools can’t afford to pay teachers well- so any pay rise needs to be fully funded. Again, hence strike action.

We can say that the teacher shortage is about working conditions too- and it is, for sure. But it’s also true that the teacher shortage appears to be most acute where a teacher’s pay won’t stretch as far because accommodation costs and other costs are high.

I want to take a moment at this point to address the idea of “work to rule”- which doesn’t actually exist in English law, btw.

Action short of a strike in teaching would likely take the form of teachers not running clubs and trips, maybe refusing to do marking as well. These are all things that would negatively impact students, but have a totally negligible economic impact, if at all. It would, inevitably, drag on for months, because the government simply would not notice.

A teacher strike, ideally one that shuts a large number of schools, will have a noticeable impact on the economy, because some parents won’t be able to work or travel. Yes, it’s rubbish for parents, but the impact on students will genuinely be lower than weeks or months of action short of a strike. And it’s the only language the government will listen to, unfortunately.

I want to talk also about what the Tories are doing to education. I alluded to this earlier, but I think it bears exploring specifically.

The Tories are destroying education. At this stage, I think it’s gone beyond neglect, into a deliberate policy to damage state education. They can’t say that out loud, of course, but why else, at a time of massive teacher shortages, would they cut teacher training places from 2024? Why else would they implement the ECT program in such a way it’s driving early career teachers out of teaching? Why else would they starve schools of funding to such an extent?

Why would the Tories do this?

I’ve got two possible theories for you.

One, they want a poor, uneducated underclass, with limited job prospects, in order to exploit them. And educating the working classes and providing them with opportunities for social mobility runs against that.

Two, some tories take a more eugenicist outlook, they think education is simply wasted on said “underclass”. That no amount of good education would improve the prospects of certain groups, so why bother?

Perhaps it’s a little of column a, a little of column b. Certainly, there are strong objections to teachers in state schools sharing opinions that might be contradictory to the governments’.

So I strongly believe this strike is to preserve the future of education.

Obviously, if we consider the wider state of the country, there are lot of important reasons to join a wider worker’s movement. And I’m going to come back to that point about working conditions, because part of that is the shortage of funding in other public sector areas, meaning schools are asked to do more and more with less and less.

It’s increasingly clear Rishi Sunak’s Tories are both fascists and disaster capitalists, who are going to take what they can from this country before their party implodes. And you all know what I think of the political alternatives. It’s also true if we wait two years for an election, people will die- not least in A and E waiting rooms, or waiting for an ambulance.

The Tories are happy to let £42 Billion in tax go unpaid (largely by the rich and mega-corporations), and then they turn around and say there’s no money.

Irena lived in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation, and dedicated her life to rescuing Jewish children from the Ghetto, and her story is complicated in a lot of ways but - well, this story isn’t actually about Irena, per se.

It’s about a bus driver.

It’s about a day when she’s traveling across town by bus with a very young Jewish child, and partway to their destination the child looks up and asks a question - in Yiddish. and the whole bus goes quiet, because everyone knows what that means. And Irena thinks, okay, we’re going to die here today.

And she’s running through her options - all of them bad - and suddenly the bus stops, and the bus driver announces that there’s been a mechanical failure and the bus needs to return to the depot immediately. Everyone off, please.

And she stands and goes to get off the bus and the driver says - not you two. Sit down. So she sits down as everyone else leaves, because, well, what else is she going to do? the options are all still bad, at this point.

and when the bus is empty the bus driver says,

“Where do you need to go?”

And then he drives them as close to their destination as he can, and lets them off, and drives away. And Irena lives, and the kid lives, and they never cross paths again.

So a janitor got three people killed, and a bus driver saved two lives - not to mention all the other lives indirectly saved because Irena was able to continue her work.

I think about that almost every day now, to be honest.

We can’t all be Irena. I couldn’t be Irena. She was in a unique place with very specific skills and connections that let her do what she did. I am just one mentally ill librarian. I can’t be her. But - I can be the bus driver. Or I could be the janitor. Because it doesn’t matter what your job is. It doesn’t matter who you are. In a world like this, every single one of us has the opportunity to do massive harm or massive good. We can save lives or end them.

And that’s scary. but it’s also very comforting? at least for me. Because at the end of the day it means this: no matter of how small and helpless and unimportant you feel, you’re never powerless in the face of great evil.

“You’re trying to capture something that can’t be captured,” Agnieszka tells him reproachfully. “It’s not like - magic isn’t some sort of math equation. It has a life of its own, like a stream, and you just guide it to where you want it to go.” And then she’s off again about forests and gleaning and picking trails and other words that sound more like they belong in a guidebook for hiking than a treatise on magic. It’s like they’re speaking two completely different languages. Sarkan has never felt this mystical “consciousness” to his magic, no sense of a will or instinct. Every spell he’s ever done on purpose has been the steady, patient work of building: the spells providing the blueprints, his words placing the bricks, his magic holding them together like mortar.

(secret bonus: the other side of her tag)

it’s been a few weeks, I suppose we should check up on the AHSGSHGAFB?!

ajdhf.

well that’s just,,,

REXCELLENT

HELL

YES

HELL

FUCKING

YES.

HAIL TO THE QUEEN

LONG MAY SHE REIGN!

this year we’re doing a much-beloved character from classic literature, “Dracula with inappropriate straw hat”

thanks everyone, may your weens be hollow and your candy be many!

I think it has to do with the stories our culture tells. The world is in danger and will be destroyed! The peril is huge and awesome! There is One Chosen Hero, Captain America or Luke Skywalker or Tony Stark or Harry Potter, and it is up to them to Save The Day! There is one decisive Battle Between Good And Evil, and Evil is Defeated and just like that, everything is puppies and rainbows and unicorns and ice cream.

Except it doesn’t work like that. Large positive change happens gradually, with people getting together and doing what they can to move things in the direction they want. We talk about the big heroes and pivotal moments, but we don’t talk about the bulk of the work that actually got done. We talk about Roe v. Wade, but we don’t talk about the groups of women across the country who worked for safe abortion access  and birth control access for decades leading up to that, setting the stage that made it possible. We talk about Martin Luther King Jr., but sort of gloss over the myriad of Black people of all genders who had been fighting for their rights and dignity in large and small ways for centuries and had been making gargantuan efforts in the decades leading up to and during the Civil Rights movement. Without them, Dr. King would not have been able to do anything.

I was talking with someone awhile back, about a politician local to them who had been elected partly because they promised to reduce the number of people sent to jail. And they did! They changed some things about the way the system worked, and dropped the number of people detained in jail before trial by something like half. Thousands of people who would have ended up in jail did not. And the person I was talking to said it was pointless because jails should be completely abolished. And they couldn’t see that there was any value to reducing the number of people in jail if you couldn’t or wouldn’t abolish jail completely. But for the thousands of people who would have been imprisoned and had their lives destroyed, that change was the difference between life and death. And yes, we should work toward abolishing the carceral justice system … but the ultimate goal shouldn’t prevent you from doing what good you can do now.

The idea that One Great Battle–or One Great Election, or One Great Politician, or One Great Activist–will save the world is nonsense. Which could be depressing, because wouldn’t it be nice if we could just do that one thing and then never have to worry again?

But it’s also freeing and a relief, because it means that you and I don’t have to be Harry Potter or Captain America or Katniss Everdeen. We don’t have to be the Chosen Hero Who Will Save The World. We just have to do our part to make our corner of it a little bit better.

The man or woman or child keeps picking them up, one by one, ignoring the increasing irate protests of the narrator, thrusting logic into the small efforts, angry at them for trying in the fact of such an impossible task.

“How can you keep working, knowing you’ll never make a difference!” they shout, gesturing to the swath of starfish all along the beach.