Buckwheat's doodles

I am begging the UK trans community and its allies to attend the Mass Lobby at Parliament on June 25th, 11am-4pm, organised by Trans Solidarity Alliance.

The new EHRC Code of Practice pushes trans people out of toilets, hospital wards, and community spaces. It normalises gender policing based on appearance and stereotypes. It becomes statutory guidance in the UK by the end of June.

Trans people are now legally their assigned gender at birth and must join gendered spaces accordingly, but if they are perceived as their lived gender, they can also be ejected from those spaces. The guidance says: either break the law, or don’t pass too well.

A mass lobby is where you invite your MP to discuss your concerns with you in-person. Ask your MP to:

Demand full parliamentary scrutiny, debate, and use their free vote on the EHRC Code of Practice.

Support any motions rejecting the EHRC guidance. As of June 4th, Labour MP Nadia Whittome has submitted a prayer motion - Early Day Motion 240.

Write to Bridget Phillipson, the Minister for Women and Equalities about our concerns

Your MP does not have to be an ally, they do not have to respond to your email for you to show up and greencard them (details below the cut.) What matters is that as many people as possible show up.

I cannot stress this enough: Showing up in person matters. It is much more effective than petitions, emails, and letters.

It is a horrible, stressful time, and I am so sorry if you're trans and live in the UK. But I was at last year's mass lobby and the line for greencarding alone stretched around the back gates. It was a record breaking mass lobby and made us impossible to ignore. Let's do even better this time. Details under the cut:

Comments: Always means always.

For my contribution to @crablorday, I present to you my Magnum Opus:

"Crablor at the Council of Elrond"

✨️🦀✨️🦀✨️🦀✨️

May I propose: Sudżoł. Głandżoł. Czoncin.

Joł kon de szychoł, ło sihłan ci młotłocze 🏍️

Dłejbuci </3

Eöl’s Meteorite

there's this thing people often say, when you bring up an incident motivated by bigotry, they say 'yeah, but that's just a small group of people that's exceptionally loud. most people don't actually believe that.' what they mean is that nobody (well maybe some people) is gonna make a really big racket just to say 'hey, im normal about this group of people'. most people do not actually support the hateful things the exceptionally loud group of people does. they might have biases but they won't go on a rant about how a certain group of people should be killed and if you asked them they would condemn the hatecrimes committed.

And the thing is, I get why the silent majority is silent. I know how difficult it is to speak up. When you feel like you don't know enough. When you feel like you can't change anything anyway. When friends or family are the people you would have to speak up against. When you know you'll get hate for speaking up. When you know people will assume things about you that aren't true because you speak up. When people connect your speaking up about one thing with also picking a side in an at most only tangentially related conflict. When speaking up means arguing against people who actually claim to support the same cause as you.

It also took me a long time to find the nerve to speak up. Even though I was disgusted and horrified by the things people said immediately. Because the people weren't just random strangers, they were people I thought of as friends. Because I had seen the way people who spoke up about the antisemitism got relentlessly harassed. Because I was afraid of people's reactions. I was afraid of losing friends or getting hate or saying something wrong.

Sadly while in some conflicts staying silent is a way to stay neutral, in the case of a group of people spreading hate and bigotry silence is complicity. Not intentional, but unintentionally. Yes, there may be the silent majority who doesn't support the actions of that small, loud group of people spewing hate, but if the silent majority doesn't speak up, they just give this group more power. If people can go somewhere and spread conspiracy theories and hate speech and prejudices unchecked. When no one stands up and corrects them. Then their numbers will grow, because there will be people who believe them, there will be people who get radicalised, cause no one ever tried to combat the conspiracies and misinformation and prejudices. If no one gets up and protects people who are getting attacked and harassed, then the attackers will just get bolder, they will be able to claim they have the support of the masses. And one day it will be too late. Because then staying silent means condemning your neighbours to death. And speaking up just means you'll die side by side with them.

So this is my plea to everyone who has been afraid to speak up these last few years: I'm pretty sure you are aware of the rise of antisemitism in these past few years. If not then I urge you to inform yourself. There are people both on the left and right who get bolder everyday. The spread misinformation and conspiracies, they harass Jews just for existing. Especially leftists claim to do this under the guise of helping palestine and are fast to denounce anyone who points out their antisemitism as a 'genocide supporter'. I understand how difficult it is to speak up against those people. The suffering in Gaza is horrifying and I wish I could just end it. And knowing I can't feels awful, being helpless feels awful. If then people come to accuse you of not caring or being evil or being everything you don't want to be, that hurts. It hurts so damn bad. And that is exactly the intention of those people. They are trying to emotionally manipulate you. They are trying to isolate you by marking you as an 'enemy'.

This is bullshit. If people are willing to turn on you because you try to raise awareness about antisemitism they unwittingly shared, then those people are not your friends. I know it's terrible to hear, but it's not you who is 'destroying the friendship'. If you politely point out someone elses mistake and they react with hate, then that is not your fault. Speaking out against antisemitism does not at all say anything about anyone's stance on the war. These are completely separate things. The suffering of the Palestinians does not justify antisemitism and people spreading antisemitism in the name of Palestine are not helping in any way. It is totally okay if you don't want to speak out about the conflict because you don't feel informed enough. It is indeed in my mind much better than sharing misinformation or reducing the conflict to a black-and-white, good-vs-evil type of thing. You are not obligated to speak up and form an opinion. Donating to an organisation that brings aid into Gaza helps much more than posting slogans on social media. Voting for people who actually have both Palestinians and Israelis best interests in mind helps more. Supporting the Israelis protesting against their current government, maybe even coordinating peaceful protests with them helps more.

the soviet union wasn’t some radical departure from the russian empire. it was simply the same empire in a new uniform. red flags and marxist rhetoric instead orthodox crosses or symbols of tasrdom. the core goal always stayed the same: control the non-russian peoples by any means necessary.

on paper, the ussr was a “friendship of nations,” a voluntary union of 15 republics. in reality, it was a centralized empire run out of moscow. the republics had no real say in foreign policy, trade, or even their own leadership. step out of line? you’d face censorship, arrests, or worse. this is well documented and it's gross that people try to downplay this because it challenges the theory they've consumed.

the soviet regime cracked down on local languages, histories, and identities. flags were banned. historians and artists were persecuted. even alphabets were changed with non-russian scripts rewritten in cyrillic to sever cultural memory. it was pure russification.

ethnic cleansing was policy. in the 1940s, stalin deported entire nationalities: chechens, crimean tatars, kalmyks, and others. shoved into cattle cars, sent to siberia or central asia and many never made it. half of the deported crimean tatars died. scholars now call these acts what they were: crimes against humanity, even genocide. ukraine’s holodomor (1932–33) was another brutal example. millions died of famine caused by soviet grain policies, right as the regime was wiping out ukrainian culture and religious life.

the baltics suffered too. in 1941 and 1949, tens of thousands of estonians, latvians, and lithuanians were deported, targeting everyone from political leaders to schoolteachers. all while moscow insisted it was promoting “friendship.” and after wwii, the ussr exported this "model "friendship" to central eastern europe. poland, hungary, czechoslovakia, east germany, and others swapped nazi rule for soviet occupation. local revolts were crushed (hungary in ’56, czechoslovakia in ’68). sovereignty was tolerated only when it served moscow.

even economically, the ussr followed the imperial playbook. resources flowed to the center; local populations got pollution and poverty. ukraine powered soviet industry with coal and grain but saw little investment or infrastructural support. the baltic states were productive yet politically silenced.

kazakhstan? used for 456 nuclear tests without consent, leaving over a million exposed to radiation. uzbekistan and turkmenistan were turned into cotton monocultures, poisoning land and water for moscow’s benefit. sound familiar? it’s the same exploitative dynamic seen in british india or the congo.

and the legacy lives on. russia’s invasions of georgia (2008), crimea (2014), and ukraine (2022) aren’t accidents. they’re rooted in an old imperial belief that former soviet republics can’t exist without moscow’s blessing. the kremlin still pushes “russkiy mir”, this insane idea that russia has the right to “protect” russian speakers wherever they are. but this protection has meant war, occupation, and death, especially for russian-speaking ukrainians.

ukraine’s refusal to bow to this narrative is exactly why it’s under attack. the empire might’ve changed flags, but its logic never died. and the fight for true decolonization is far from over.

And in the meantime, many have recommended getting a VPN, too. (Not to sign the Petition as I think people are getting confused. UK folk use a VPN just in general.)