I was taught “biblical womanhood” meant submission, modesty & obedience without question. They called it godly. I call it gendered control.

I want more disabled girls in movies whose story arcs aren’t “learning to love themselves” or “inspiring the able-bodied.” Let them be messy detectives, chaotic villains, bored baristas & terrible exes.

Patriarchy is adaptive. Call it out in the home and it shape-shifts into “I’m just traditional.” Call it out at work and it becomes “culture fit.” Sexism survives by rebranding itself as preference, personality, or “just how things are.”

Glinda’s line about how her role is “to be encouraging!” is peak white feminism. Her job is to soothe without question. To soften power’s edges while leaving the structure intact. ✨💖 “We can’t all come and go by bubble” is Elphaba’s reminder: some of us don’t get the choice of soft landings.

tiny radical act for disabled folks: “Per disability law, I am requesting reasonable accommodations.” (not: “I’m so sorry to ask but do you think you could possibly…?”)

I don’t think non-disabled people understand how much of our lives are spent being ghosted by “services.” Intake forms, screening calls, then nothing. We can use our last scraps of energy as disabled people to ask for help, only to be ignored.

being denied accommodations when you’re disabled & alone hits different. There’s no “let me call my lawyer cousin” moment. It’s just you, your disability, the “we’re unable to move forward at this time” email & the rent still due.

"Why not equalism instead of feminism?" can serve as code for: I'm uncomfortable naming patriarchy as the system that actually needs dismantling.

the forest doesn't ask me to optimize my productivity or monetize my existence and honestly that's the most revolutionary relationship i have 🍃

advocating for your invisible disability often means saying the same thing 47 different ways to 12 different specialists until someone finally listens.

Breaking: An Epstein survivor just silenced press conference attendees when she delivered the following remarks: “Today we stand in a moment that will decide whether our government belongs to the American people, or to those who prey on them.”

No lawmaker in Congress should be able to buy, own, and sell individual stocks. Period. Let's make Congressional stock trading illegal.

📌 #ChronicIllness Pinned Post 📌 This feed pulls in posts with the keywords of #ChronicIllness, #ChronicPain, #rareDisease, and #InvisiableIllness This feed can be found at bsky.app/profile/did:... Other keywords the feed pulls in can be found in the following thread below. 1/6

if you are a white person who wants to be an autism advocate, you need to be able to accept constructive criticism without tone policing those in your community who are more marginalized than you

Trump tried to slash Social Security benefits for struggling Americans with disabilities. I led 165 @housedemocrats.bsky.social with Rep. John Larson to push back. Today, they gave up on the cuts. Democrats will continue to stand united against Trump’s Project 2025 agenda.

I’ve stopped trying to tell my story “in order” in therapy. 🔁 My nervous system doesn’t communicate in a linear timeline. I have to hold space for the feelings & memories. the looping, the resurfacing, the refusal to settle, until someone dares to witness it differently.

the way you annotate your books? that's self-expression. the playlist you make for writing? self-expression. the little doodles in your margins? SELF-EXPRESSION. you're already doing it babe 🌙📖

People say “love is love,” but the benefits office says marriage may cut your SSI. Disability marriage equality matters, too! 💜

Growing up queer in the South means learning to hold contradictions: I hate certain histories. I love this land. I fear these people. I AM these people. And somehow I’m still rooting for us to do better.

Some days I am a miracle of maintenance: pills, stretches, foam rollers & heating pads. I grieve how survival eats the hours I intended for art.

It matters that “quiet piggy” was Trump’s response to being questioned about Epstein. A woman raised an issue of gendered violence & the response was to lob a gendered insult. Misogyny as smokescreen.

“Quiet piggy” is the type of comment that happens when someone is more threatened by a woman’s voice than by the consequences of their own actions.

Ecofeminism in one sentence: The fight against gender oppression & the fight for the planet are the same fight, because they share the same enemy: systems built on domination, extraction, and disposability.

growing up queer in fundamentalist Christianity meant learning to become your own hell so maybe you wouldn’t get thrown into the big one.

“Good shit takes time. Extend time, bend time, crip time.” — Alice Wong (Year of the Tiger: An Activist’s Life)

25th rising creator in health politics on Substack, and I didn’t even have to blame Tylenol to do it! 😇 substack.com/@alyssacdavi... #rfkjr

The starving artist metaphor never quite worked. It suggested we were just underfed, overlooked, waiting for our chance. But we’re not starving anymore. We’re the meal. open.substack.com/pub/alyssacd...

Chronic pain is frustrating because you don’t really “get used to it” but you also can’t be shocked by it every day. So you end up in this weird middle place: not okay, not surprised, still having to function inside a body that’s actively negotiating with fire.

Carceral feminism reaches for police, prisons & punishment as “solutions” to gendered violence. Intersectional feminism asks who gets policed, who is believed by the courts, who profits from prison labor.

Holding grief & gratitude for Alice Wong. for every story she amplified, every syllabus she reshaped, every young (and not-so-young) disabled person who saw themselves reflected in her work. May we honor her by carrying forward her organizing principle: access is love.

Your pronouns are valid on days you’re too tired to correct people. Legitimacy shouldn’t hinge on your stamina to self-advocate.

“Invisible illness” isn’t invisible to gatekeepers. Not when —you need a prior authorization —an attendance policy exists —pre-existing conditions = denial —early-refills get blocked —the VA/SSA “rates” your disability Invisible to care, hyper-visible to bureaucracy. 📝

Autistic ways of saying “I love you” (that you might miss): - “I researched your problem. Here are your options” - “I made a spreadsheet/ list/ plan to help you” - being ourselves around you (infodumping, not masking etc) - “Here’s a meme that I think you’d like” #AutismAwareness

When people talk about the excesses of MeToo, they have to lie, because the reality is that there was no massive social reckoning forcing people to believe survivors or hold perpetrators accountable. In fact, there has been a significant backsliding and new punishments in rejection of MeToo

Rep. Yassamin Ansari has set up a table and this sign outside Speaker Johnson’s office.

What if the most supportive thing we can do is refuse to rush our becoming? 🌱 To stretch time like skin over a drum and let it sound with the ache of all we’re still unfolding into?

me during the thinning of the veil: *sobbing over a leaf* *texting my dead grandmother* *knowing things I shouldn't know* *eating soup* it's called balance 🍂

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Internalized shame makes you believe that asking for help is a burden. That needing accommodation is an inconvenience. That your pain isn't "bad enough" to deserve attention. This is what ableism does. It convinces you that your humanity is negotiable. 🫂

Boundaries + compassion = the architecture of belonging. Without both, inclusion collapses into performative niceness or porous burnout. Build wisely, love fiercely. 💜

dear academia: I am not a machine with an intellect. I am a constellation of experiences…many of them emotional, all of them sacred to my learning process. 📚

Love takes off the masks we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. — James Baldwin

What haunts isn’t random. It’s patterned. Ghosts appear where systems fail and wounds fester— in histories of slavery, colonialism, gender violence, state terror. (ghostly matters, Avery F Gordon)

Disability justice is also about who gets to imagine themselves as sensual. The constructed, temporarily-abled body is a ghost that haunts our discussions of sexuality. It dictates which bodies are “fit” for love, lust, & reproduction. We must challenge this cultural, political fiction.

As scholar Kath Weston wrote, "Kinship is not always given; it is often achieved." Our chosen families are meticulous works of art, forged by intention, loyalty, and fierce love. I’m grateful for every Auntie, friend, and sister who has chosen us into existence.

The physical, psychological & pocketbook costs of late diagnosis can be staggering. Treating advanced chronic illness is always more complex & expensive. 💲 Early detection may help avoid years of confusion, mismanaged symptoms & even irreversible damage.

The flu benched me for 5 days, inflammatory arthritis rearranged my whole fucking calendar. Acute illness gets a finish line (an antibiotic, a sick day, soup). Chronic illness often gets a spreadsheet: doses, flares & insurance portals with 17 tabs. 🤕

I didn’t find the first realistic plan for my illness on PubMed. It found me in a group chat: a ride-share spreadsheet, side effect complaints & recommendations on compression socks. These sideways networks keep up alive. That’s the architecture of disability liberation.

8:03 a.m., my smart speaker chirps in a perky femme voice. We’re so used to these machines being eager to apologize, serve & obey. Feminist scholars call this the perpetuation of the “servile female” stereotype in the digital realm.

me: *having a perfectly normal day* alanis morisette: isn't it ironic? me: *spiral of existential thoughts while making tea* 🫖✨