This is just kinda On My Mind lately and I thought I'd share a little. This isn't fandom related!

I tend to get a lot of questions around the WWW about how to support and show allyship to Indigenous folks and often I give the short and simple answer of "Reparations!" or "Go to your local rez and ask them" etc but I've had some more direct options mulling over in my mind for a few days and decided to lay them out for folks to share around.

1. Obviously reparations is one of the major ways you can help. Making sure even one Indigenous person can survive another day is going to do so SO much good.

2. Another great way you can help is just by being an emotional and mental sounding board every now and then. If things are rough for Indigenous ppl in the moment and u can see it, reach out to your friends who are suffering and just be kind to them. Let them know that you value them as people and not just a home-made poster about climate change.

3. And of course, there's also just going to the nearest rez and asking them what they need. Often they'll say something like donations(in the form of food, clothes, supplies, etc.) which is one of the MOST direct ways to impact change as an individual. You're helping to offset the number of ppl working against us by directly joining the ranks with action.

4. The thing I think I encourage the most, though, is going to the rez with the offer of physically showing up on a regular basis to be a support for people like land and water protectors, front-line activists, disabled community members who need more support than their rez can provide.

It should be noted that Covid is going to make a lot of that more complicated, u may not be able to help with community support on or around the rez for the safety of their vulnerable people, but one thing we will NEVER have enough of is people actively showing up to continuously support land and water protectors.

They face some of the hardest setbacks and take on some of the scariest battles in trying to take back our sovereignty. If you want to do the absolute MOST you can do to support LandBack, then you should go out to locations and actively support land and water protectors. Bring them food, water, shelter, seating, weather protective clothing and products. They're out there fighting for the safety and survival of our people, and they need literally all the help they can get.

I'm really fucking upset

The thing is people always want to associate rough sleeping and homelessness as if the two are synonymous, and sneer at and mock people for claiming homelessness if they're sofa surfing or staying with a friend/family, which is really fucking galling because

a) I work in homelessness and that's by far the most common type of homelessness and particularly the type of homelessness most women, people of colour and disabled people experience for the longest (because rough sleeping and hostels aren't safe for anyone but they're PARTICULARLY unsafe and inaccessible for vulnerable and marginalised people). we don't know how many people are hidden homeless in Scotland because they tend not to be registered but even those on record vastly outnumber most other forms of homelessness.

b) I very firmly believe most people who make these sneering comments about 'saying you're homeless when you're safe indoors' have never been in a long term situation of that type because yeah it's safer than rough sleeping or night shelters but it's exhausting. you can't register for services, you can't unpack, you're fully reliant on the kindness of others and you can't afford to hold up boundaries in case you lose that goodwill, your pride and self esteem get crushed to powder, you have no privacy and no control over your life, you have no space and no security, you're on edge all the time. I just don't think that a lot of people fully appreciate how fucking dehumanising and soul crushing it is to have no ownership of anything in your life and no power over your immediate space or future. I know people who've actively preferred sleeping rough to sofa surfing (they were able-bodied men but still) because at least you feel like you have some measure of control and you're not feeling like you're a burden. and honestly fuck you for sitting in your own home and smugly typing that other people aren't suffering dramatically enough for your liking. hidden homelessness is a survival option. people aren't fucking obligated to perform the maximum degree of tragedy to deserve empathy and support, and the idea that "the homeless" means exclusively someone in a sleeping bag on a street corner (less than 5% of the total homeless population in Scotland) is unabashed poverty porn bullshit motivated less by what's a real problem and more by what's a visible problem.

c) yes I have been Exactly This Type of homeless and because of this mindset it has taken me almost a decade to really process how much it fucked me up. and every time this conversation happens it sends me spiralling again.

I wrote this blog on the topic (it says it was written by some other ppl but I will tell you a secret about charity comms - it's 90% ghostwriting) and I've got another one coming up late in the month but uhhhh ppl are litigating What Counts As Homelessness in a very condescending and unpleasant way and I am hmmmm Triggered.

cannibal cafes?? wait like, dispensaries for human meat? or like, more of a casual serendipi-tea type place w cucumber liver sandwiches? god i just realized the potential safe-haven this creates for human trafficking and body disposal, theft of remains too. if parts are being sold then historical/protected remains likely won’t be illegal to sell anymore, meaning ppl could get away with grave-robbing and desecration much more easily.

in saying that people would voluntarily donate(?) their limbs and organs cause why not: surgery is extremely dangerous. and expensive, like super fucking expensive. w all the tech too. like you would need surgeons to perform unnecessary and potentially life-threatening surgery. with that goes the potentials of prosthetics, physical therapy to relearn everything again, nerve damage, phantom + pain, inaccessible spaces cos ablism, dialysis, scarring, and a huge recovery period where it’s not likely they’d be able to work/go to school/support their own needs. then they have to live with that disability for the rest of their life. i don’t know what you mean by the partial meat harvest thing, could you explain that?

also how would disability claims work if you willingly chopped off your leg and can no longer work, either due to inaccessibility or health complications ? technically it’s a voluntary unnecessary surgery, so would they be held liable? what if they donate an arm but die on the table, would the whole corpse be a snack then?

I mean, it would be kind of like. Hair donations? Like you show up to have your hair cut, you don't show up with a bag of human hair. You'd have to know the source and that it was given freely. Obviously, my main concern is with this being ethical- trafficking, murder, and body desecration would all still be illegal in the ideal scenario here.

As for just wanting to, plenty of people have body dysmorphic disorder and may actually desire to have part of their body removed for any reason. Of course, if they're an adult and they're well informed of what's going to happen as a result of removing a body part, I trust them to make that decision for themselves. It's largely about bodily autonomy in that case. But also, people will do all kind of physically risky and expensive things- I've personally considered getting a tongue piercing, and just reading into the care for that... it's a lot just to have a piece of metal in your tongue.

Partial meat harvesting is meat harvesting in part and not whole, to about any non fatal amount. It could be as little as a sliver off the arm, or the entire left leg. It's completely up to the person who's having the part(s) removed.

I don't know how to think about the disability thing actually. I mean, disability shouldn't be like a "poor you, here's some money for your tragedy" it should be "here's the help you need to live a healthy life". And regardless of whether or not that disability was willingly walked into, I do still think they deserve disability assistance.

Now health complications are a different thing. If the procedure doesn't go as expected, I'd say you're liable to be compensated for damages by the medical staff that took the meat from you. And if someone dies as a result of an arm donation let's say, then their arm can be harvested as that's what they gave permission for, but the rest of the body cannot.