#Disability discrimination exploitation & abuse

[t-jfh]

NDIS Minister Bill Shorten 'perplexed' controversial practices at Irabina Autism Services continued into last year.

By Anne Connolly

ABC TV - Four Corners

ABC News - 27 September 2023

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Anica has seen a lot in her job but this experience left her feeling ‘physically shaking’.

ABC Four Corners investigation prompts worker to come forward, saying controversial practices were still happening last year.

By Anne Connolly, Sacha Payne and Sian Johnson

ABC News - 27 September 2023

COMMUNITY WARNING - GRAPHIC CONTENT The following YouTube factual video contains graphic content that may disturb some viewers.

YouTube video >> How the NDIS is failing to protect people with disabilities | ABC TV Four Corners (Series 2023, Ep. 35) - Careless [Released 25 September 2023 / 50mins.+47secs.]:

Australia's National Disability Insurance Scheme has transformed the lives of thousands of people, but Four Corners exposes criminals, opportunists and registered providers who have been overcharging and defrauding the system.

This episode also contains shocking video showing how a teenage boy with autism was treated during an NDIS-funded therapy session.

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Australia needs 'social transformation' to be 'truly inclusive', says disability royal commission.

Australia's biggest-ever investigation into the discriminatory treatment of people with disability has handed down its findings, and they make for sobering reading.

The disability royal commission has made 222 recommendations to reduce the violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation of the roughly one-in-five Australians who live with disability.

After more than four years of witness testimony and 'harrowing' evidence, the disability royal commission wants these changes. Here are the key takeaways.

By the Specialist Reporting Team's Evan Young and Leonie Thorne

ABC News - 29 September 2023

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The 10 key points from the Disability Royal Commission

By Natassia Chrysanthos

The Age & The Sydney Morning Herald - September 29, 2023

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Holy CRAP the UN Cybercrime Treaty is a nightmare

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

If there's one thing I learned from all my years as an NGO delegate to UN specialized agencies, it's that UN treaties are dangerous, liable to capture by unholy alliances of authoritarian states and rapacious global capitalists.

Most of my UN work was on copyright and "paracopyright," and my track record was 2:0; I helped kill a terrible treaty (the WIPO Broadcast Treaty) and helped pass a great one (the Marrakesh Treaty on the rights of people with disabilities to access copyrighted works):

https://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/marrakesh/

It's been many years since I had to shave and stuff myself into a suit and tie and go to Geneva, and I don't miss it – and thankfully, I have colleagues who do that work, better than I ever did. Yesterday, I heard from one such EFF colleague, Katitza Rodriguez, about the Cybercrime Treaty, which is about to pass, and which is, to put it mildly, terrifying:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/07/un-cybercrime-draft-convention-dangerously-expands-state-surveillance-powers

Look, cybercrime is a real thing, from pig butchering to ransomware, and there's real, global harms that can be attributed to it. Cybercrime is transnational, making it hard for cops in any one jurisdiction to handle it. So there's a reason to think about formal international standards for fighting cybercrime.

But that's not what's in the Cybercrime Treaty.

Here's a quick sketch of the significant defects in the Cybercrime Treaty.

The treaty has an extremely loose definition of cybercrime, and that looseness is deliberate. In authoritarian states like China and Russia (whose delegations are the driving force behind this treaty), "cybercrime" has come to mean "anything the government disfavors, if you do it with a computer." "Cybercrime" can mean online criticism of the government, or professions of religious belief, or material supporting LGBTQ rights.

Nations that sign up to the Cybercrime Treaty will be obliged to help other nations fight "cybercrime" – however those nations define it. They'll be required to provide surveillance data – for example, by forcing online services within their borders to cough up their users' private data, or even to pressure employees to install back-doors in their systems for ongoing monitoring.

These obligations to aid in surveillance are mandatory, but much of the Cybercrime Treaty is optional. What's optional? The human rights safeguards. Member states "should" or "may" create standards for legality, necessity, proportionality, non-discrimination, and legitimate purpose. But even if they do, the treaty can oblige them to assist in surveillance orders that originate with other states that decided not to create these standards.

When that happens, the citizens of the affected states may never find out about it. There are eight articles in the treaty that establish obligations for indefinite secrecy regarding surveillance undertaken on behalf of other signatories. That means that your government may be asked to spy on you and the people you love, they may order employees of tech companies to backdoor your account and devices, and that fact will remain secret forever. Forget challenging these sneak-and-peek orders in court – you won't even know about them:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/06/un-cybercrime-draft-convention-blank-check-unchecked-surveillance-abuses

Now here's the kicker: while this treaty creates broad powers to fight things governments dislike, simply by branding them "cybercrime," it actually undermines the fight against cybercrime itself. Most cybercrime involves exploiting security defects in devices and services – think of ransomware attacks – and the Cybercrime Treaty endangers the security researchers who point out these defects, creating grave criminal liability for the people we rely on to warn us when the tech vendors we rely upon have put us at risk.

This is the granddaddy of tech free speech fights. Since the paper tape days, researchers who discovered defects in critical systems have been intimidated, threatened, sued and even imprisoned for blowing the whistle. Tech giants insist that they should have a veto over who can publish true facts about the defects in their products, and dress up this demand as concern over security. "If you tell bad guys about the mistakes we made, they will exploit those bugs and harm our users. You should tell us about those bugs, sure, but only we can decide when it's the right time for our users and customers to find out about them."

When it comes to warnings about the defects in their own products, corporations have an irreconcilable conflict of interest. Time and again, we've seen corporations rationalize their way into suppressing or ignoring bug reports. Sometimes, they simply delay the warning until they've concluded a merger or secured a board vote on executive compensation.

Sometimes, they decide that a bug is really a feature – like when Facebook decided not to do anything about the fact that anyone could enumerate the full membership of any Facebook group (including, for example, members of a support group for people with cancer). This group enumeration bug was actually a part of the company's advertising targeting system, so they decided to let it stand, rather than re-engineer their surveillance advertising business.

The idea that users are safer when bugs are kept secret is called "security through obscurity" and no one believes in it – except corporate executives. As Bruce Schneier says, "Anyone can design a system that is so secure that they themselves can't break it. That doesn't mean it's secure – it just means that it's secure against people stupider than the system's designer":

The history of massive, brutal cybersecurity breaches is an unbroken string of heartbreakingly naive confidence in security through obscurity:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/05/battery-vampire/#drained

But despite this, the idea that some bugs should be kept secret and allowed to fester has powerful champions: a public-private partnership of corporate execs, government spy agencies and cyber-arms dealers. Agencies like the NSA and CIA have huge teams toiling away to discover defects in widely used products. These defects put the populations of their home countries in grave danger, but rather than reporting them, the spy agencies hoard these defects.

The spy agencies have an official doctrine defending this reckless practice: they call it "NOBUS," which stands for "No One But Us." As in: "No one but us is smart enough to find these bugs, so we can keep them secret and use them attack our adversaries, without worrying about those adversaries using them to attack the people we are sworn to protect."

NOBUS is empirically wrong. In the 2010s, we saw a string of leaked NSA and CIA cyberweapons. One of these, "Eternalblue" was incorporated into off-the-shelf ransomware, leading to the ransomware epidemic that rages even today. You can thank the NSA's decision to hoard – rather than disclose and patch – the Eternalblue exploit for the ransoming of cities like Baltimore, hospitals up and down the country, and an oil pipeline:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EternalBlue

The leak of these cyberweapons didn't just provide raw material for the world's cybercriminals, it also provided data for researchers. A study of CIA and NSA NOBUS defects found that there was a one-in-five chance of a bug that had been hoarded by a spy agency being independently discovered by a criminal, weaponized, and released into the wild.

Not every government has the wherewithal to staff its own defect-mining operation, but that's where the private sector steps in. Cyber-arms dealers like the NSO Group find or buy security defects in widely used products and services and turn them into products – military-grade cyberweapons that are used to attack human rights groups, opposition figures, and journalists:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/24/breaking-the-news/#kingdom

A good Cybercrime Treaty would recognize the perverse incentives that create the coalition to keep us from knowing which products we can trust and which ones we should avoid. It would shut down companies like the NSO Group, ban spy agencies from hoarding defects, and establish an absolute defense for security researchers who reveal true facts about defects.

Instead, the Cybercrime Treaty creates new obligations on signatories to help other countries' cops and courts silence and punish security researchers who make these true disclosures, ensuring that spies and criminals will know which products aren't safe to use, but we won't (until it's too late):

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/06/if-not-amended-states-must-reject-flawed-draft-un-cybercrime-convention

A Cybercrime Treaty is a good idea, and even this Cybercrime Treaty could be salvaged. The member-states have it in their power to accept proposed revisions that would protect human rights and security researchers, narrow the definition of "cybercrime," and mandate transparency. They could establish member states' powers to refuse illegitimate requests from other countries:

https://www.eff.org/press/releases/media-briefing-eff-partners-warn-un-member-states-are-poised-approve-dangerou

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/23/expanded-spying-powers/#in-russia-crime-cybers-you

Image: EFF https://www.eff.org/files/banner_library/cybercrime-2024-2b.jpg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/

[leahkentwriter]

Backstories for girls and women in stories that *don't* involve sexual assault.

I beta read a lot, and am involved in writing communities of various kinds, and I briefly taught English way back in the day, and I consume storytelling media in general - and one of my biggest pet peeves is sexual assault backstories. While I think this is improving, it's still annoying to me that a lot of writers (of all genders, but particularly men) fall back on a sexual assault backstory whenever they need to make a girl or woman in a story complicated or haunted or fucked up in some way.

Unless your story is dealing with the topic of sexual assault in some way, please don't use it as a way to give a character depth or angst.

Here are some prompts, just to get you started with some ideas.

Why would a woman be trying to escape her past? Why would she be seeking a fresh start?

She hated her small town; the people there didn't understand her and she never felt like she fit in - she's queer, she has a weird birthmark, she's got unique interests, she has magical powers, etc.

She's a criminal - she robbed banks or stole cars and she wanted a fresh start

She was an addict and hurt people, and she wants a fresh start now that she's sober

Her parent is a criminal or an addict and she's trying to outrun the stigma of being related to them

She didn't get along with a stepparent and skipped town as soon as she turned 18

She had big dreams of being something else, and left to pursue them

Her childhood home was haunted, but no one believed her

She got married young then divorced, and wants to start over somewhere that no one knows her

Heartbreak of any variety - she's leaving a place that reminds her too much of someone she lost or couldn't have

She wants better; maybe more money, or a career, or simply a higher quality of life

Some other violent tragedy occurred - a school shooting, an explosion at the plant, police brutality, her best friend was killed, etc.

Her hometown no longer exists (climate change, the main factory shut down, it was overrun by rabid squirrels, etc.)

What would make a woman distrustful of others?

Heartbreak; being lied to, cheated on, left for her best friend, etc.

A big betrayal - her former best friend told everyone a secret about her, someone weaponized her trauma or her past or a major flaw she's sensitive about, etc.

She witnessed a traumatizing event as a child

Her mother was a grifter and used her as part of her scams

One parent cheated on the other and broke up the family

Her older brother isn't dead after all, he was disowned for being gay and now she's questioning everything her parents ever told her

She has problems with her memory, and is never quite sure what the truth is

She's bad at reading people and has been taken advantage of

She finds out a dark secret about someone she loves and is having trouble processing it

She gradually comes to see that someone she idealized as a child is not at all what they seem

Someone she thought was a good, kind, and genuine person is arrested for a terrible crime

Spiritual abuse - the worldview she was taught was right turns out to be exploitative, represses women, etc., so she leaves

What would cause a woman to have mental health issues?

Any form of abuse - doesn't have to be sexual

Her parents had really high expectations that she couldn't live up to

It simply runs in the family

Survivor's guilt - she survived something that someone else did not

She was bullied and no one protected her

Her parents were very controlling and destroyed her confidence

Her sibling was the golden child and she was the scapegoat

She's had issues since childhood but her parents refused to admit there was anything wrong with her, so she didn't get help

Being a part of any oppressed group of people who experience discrimination - she's a person of color, she's an immigrant, she's got a disability, she's queer, etc.

Any major trauma, either witnessed or being a part of - weather events and natural disasters, infrastructure collapse, crashes and accidents, fires, a shooting or a murder, etc.

You're a writer - get creative. There are lots of ways to traumatize and haunt a girl/woman character without having to resort to a sexual assault backstory. You can even make her the problem! Maybe she's the one who did something bad and is trying to outrun the guilt.

Let's also let go of the idea that it's meeting and falling in love with a man that saves her from her trauma. Let her have a healing arc that doesn't involve a man - a love story can still be there, but it can't be the magic healing balm that fixes her. Make her have to save herself. Give her autonomy to both make her own mistakes, and improve her own situation. Don't let your man go into savior mode - let him get frustrated with her. Let her push him away without him clinging to her in a desperate bid to show her what unconditional love is. Don't let him be a martyr to her trauma.

Women are complicated for many reasons. We have trauma for many reasons. We have mental health issues for many reasons. We may want to escape our past for many reasons. We're angsty and weird for many reasons.

Please pick literally anything other than sexual assault.

[transformersconfessions]

Boltax here

I think Getaway was more right than alot of people are willing to admit.

Was he perfect? Hell no, he was mentally unwell and exploited by a fucked up therapist named after the real world Dr. Incest.

That said nothing he did was anywhere near as reprehensible as the members of the main cast, and the fact he was just killed at the end for a joke spits in the face of any redemption story that MTMTE tried to tell. Literal space hitler? Happy ending, gets away with the billions who died in his genocide

Mr Mindrape needle fingers? Is woobie and gets to live out his days with his flashdrive boyfriend while all his victims decay mentally due to being lobotomized by him for the government because he liked how it felt [never said sorry]

Capitalist bar owner/stalker of a celebrity who regularly discriminated against and bullied someone for their disability all the while committing workers rights abuses? Is chill, no punishment, no criticism.

Child soldier who did bad things to make Space Hitler see justice? Worse than space hitler somehow and fans cheer that he was mutilated by the captain and offered 0 mental help

.

[cripplecharacters]

hello! i like to ask this for a long time but i cant word it better since english isnt my first language

it is ok to portray a disabled character being bullied/abused due of their disability? or if it doesnt is there is another way to portray ableism that isnt just being bullied and abused?

Hello,

in general, yes you can write your character experiencing bullying and/or ableist abuse. That happens. But whether you should depends on what kind of story you're trying to tell, and how much you know about ableism as a type of discrimination. It absolutely doesn't end at bullying or abuse, and they aren't even the most prevalent ones by a long mile.

Not every story with disabled characters needs to have them experiencing ableism, especially not the physically violent kind. If your story doesn't focus on some sort of social commentary or disability rights theme, I'd consider how necessary it is for it to be there. Being disabled doesn't necessarily mean one will or has been bullied or abused.

There's approximately one billion kinds of ableism that aren't either of these. Just from the things that I'm sure you've seen/heard of before: lack of accessible infrastructure, lack of access to education, the cost of disability aids, the costs of chronic medication, medical negligence, eugenic rhetorics, "what happened to you?" (AKA invasive questions), intruding on the disabled person's personal space by touching them or their mobility aids (which could be both abuse or bullying, but probably not what you had in mind), being infantilized or seen as incompetent, the list could go on pretty much forever.

Ableism means discrimination against disabled people, which is a group so incredibly diverse that it's near impossible to tell you what you could portray your character experiencing without knowing what kind of disability they have. For some disabilities it gets so specific and unique that it gets its own name; see audism or disfiguremisia that affect Deaf people and people with facial differences respectively. If your character has PTSD, a lack of ramp won't affect them the same way it would a wheelchair or mobility scooter user. You have to take into account their actual disability, their background, when and where your story takes place, etc.

If you want to portray ableism as a part of your story or the character's backstory, the most important thing is research. Both disabled history; what ableism means and how it affected the disabled community long-term, as well as just talking to disabled people on what and how it affects them on the daily. You will see that microaggressions, financial barriers, and structural inaccessibility will be the most prevalent problems for a big portion of the population.

After you learn about ableism from the inside and out, you can think what works for your story - maybe it could be just "inaccessibility is everywhere and also able-bodied people are annoying" rather than an extremely sensitive scenario around a disabled person being physically abused for being disabled.

I will also say that while you can write about whatever you want, not all disabled readers are particularly excited to see stories where disabled characters get abused for being disabled. A lot of these tend to go into what I've called "torture porn" category, where the character is just subjected to seemingly endless suffering for no real reason and the whole thing generally just feels exploitative. So keep in mind that even though ableism exists, disabled joy is absolutely real and always has been there too.

mod Sasza

[soapver4]

Paintbrush Demon

Spinoff Bubble: An old paintbrush demon's meditations on what it means to have the brush as your only tool in a demon-fighting career.

Ancient romance series Eternal Night Star River, which unmentionable official English title can be easily figured out by the uninitiated, has done a great job of calling out society's persecution and abuse of those we perceive as different from ourselves. Nevertheless, it could have gone further. The idea that demons, the Other in the story universe, are single-minded beings incapable of complex considerations is worth dissection, for one. Has this kind of facet of demon lore in general grown out of dominant real-life social groups' desire to assert superiority over those they fear and alienate? Is it a fair assessment of those alienated people? Already, global discourse has seen pushback from anti-discrimination advocates against all kinds of reductive narratives that deny the full humanity and intricate psychological depth of discriminated individuals, positive ethnic and disability stereotypes included. Regardless of their positions in power hierarchies, people want to be accepted not as labels or icons, but as whole human beings with a dynamic, wide range of thoughts, emotions, needs and experiences.

This range encompasses dreams beyond mere survival. As if it is not enough that discriminated people in our non-magical world often feel that they have to work twice as hard as ordinary counterparts to overcome prejudice in stable jobs, headlines on raising work competencies of disabled adults can be far more commonplace than headlines on recognizing work competencies of disabled adults, perpetuating generalizations about disabled skillsets. Against this backdrop, competing with ordinary counterparts for riskier careers may appear to be a no-no. Successful counterexamples in such careers are readily brushed off as resources-blessed outliers. Well-meaning people may also focus on shepherding marginalized individuals to a well-defined set of lower-skilled, uncreative vocational roles that do not always match personal interests — goods assembly and packing, F&B service, etc. — urging them to be grateful for having any work at all. There is enough fortune in living as soulless economic machines raising more soulless economic machines who will raise yet more soulless economic machines in time-exploitative late-stage capitalism. But chances are a fit with any statistical model is no more your privilege than outlierhood is. How well did Vincent van Gogh's "real jobs" go? The old paintbrush demon's predicament is one all around us.

Episode 1: Scenic Portraits

Regaled by his granddad's accounts of epic battles against mighty monsters, Mao Ye has always dreamt of subduing evil-doing demons. The inconvenient part is that he himself is a demon in a human-run world that sees all of his kind as malicious, and a helpless paintbrush demon at that. So he resorts to painting scenic portraits for tourists in his home province for a living, with a secret emphasis on the scenic part. He would station himself at locations of those battles and meticulously transfer the grandeur of the backdrops to his paper with the greatest aesthetic finesse, then with a discreet sigh slap on some plainer strokes to add the figures of tourists commissioning the portraits. We are treated to a comedic sequence of him cooking up all sorts of tricks and excuses to evade addition of those figures.

It comes as a shattering shock to our old protagonist when news reach him that one of the supposedly silly young couple he last drew a portrait for were [spoiler caution w.r.t. original series] the Godly World Guardian, who's simultaneously a half-demon of the highest demon rank and a demon catcher of the highest rank, and his fiancée, herself rumored to be a reincarnation of the previous Godly World Guardian and whose bubbly, womanly look belies her unique supreme ability, among humans, to slay demons barehanded. Together, they have just vanquished a demoness about to exterminate the world. What has he been doing with his thousand years of existence?

Episode 2: Hair-Raising

As in the original series, a catastrophe threatened to break out even after the obliteration of the demoness. Chaos that ensued resulted in the escape of numerous horrendous demons from demon-trapping pagodas and dungeons. Uncertainty in the air dampened consumer spending. By now, nobody cares for touristy mementos anymore. Simultaneously, though, demon catching academies sprout up all over the land in response to demand for demon catchers and rising aspirations among humans and demons alike to work as one, inspired no doubt by the feat of the [spoiler caution w.r.t. original series] half-demon who serves as a Godly World Guardian. Mao Ye swiftly enrolls in one such academy, never mind that principals and instructors in the academies barely conceal their disbelief that most demons can be dutiful demon catchers. To them, training demons in the craft is like handing the keys of bank vaults to thieves, but outright turning away demon applicants may invite public reprobation in the wake of widespread admiration of and sympathy for the half-demon's tumultuous life story.

Mao Ye's instructor, however, softens at the sight of his age. Believing that only true passion for justice could have motivated such a frail man to opt for grueling training in lieu of peaceful retirement, the instructor puts in the utmost effort to impart his skills to the paintbrush demon. Unlike innumerable insecure instructors, he does not reserve any knowledge to himself. Mao Ye, for his own part, puts up with pain and fatigue exacerbated by advanced age as he practices moves, pores over readings and compiles notes late into the night for months on end.

It's time for a real-world practice session. On the instructor's command, Mao Ye joins a squad of demon catchers for a week. They face off with a menacing wolf demon. The only other demon on the squad, a heart-melting little cherry demoness nobody takes seriously, emerges as the MVP, firing off with extreme precision in timing and target multiple task-appropriate talismans that let her take down the big bad wolf. Our paintbrush demon, on the other hand, emerges with a chunk of brush hair scraped off his brush head.

Mao Ye is troubled. He realizes that he selfishly loves battle scenes more than actual battles. Art is his primary love, dueling his secondary love. The tribulations of age mean that his brush head has been growing frayed to begin with. If the battles go on, he will no longer be able to draw. Taking on a new identity as a demon catcher would mean erasure of his cherished identity as an artist.

The instructor flies into a thunderous rage on hearing the squad's report of Mao Ye quitting. He calls the paintbrush demon a bad role model for youth, a failed, fickle team player, the reason the world still does not trust demons, the cause of his old miserable demon life, and a prime example of why we should not pity anyone too readily. Mao Ye does not take kindly to the insults, but in the end he concedes, "I'm an unlikable protagonist."

He returns to his hut, angrily churning out paintings after paintings of himself as a spineless monster, egoistic monster and deceitful monster.

Episode 3: Emo-Innards

"Gee, did you decide to quit your monkhood plan halfway into the shave, old man?"

"Get lost if you don't want any portrait."

"Portrait? I heard that what you really do are scenery paintings!"

"No. I do portraits."

The paintbrush demon shoves rolls of those angry paintings at the lad passing by his art booth.

"Buy one to have a good laugh at this monster every day so that you can feel better about yourself."

By and by, self-deprecation actually sells. These are bleak times, after all. Mao Ye, already famous for his art in the original series, becomes the talk of the town for essentially inventing comedic art decor therapy. Demoralized demon catchers really chuckle at his self-portraits before they restart sticky missions.The old and new artworks attract the attention of a businesswoman setting up a franchise of demon catching academies in an already saturated industry. She has long believed the market base for such academies can be broadened further still. Mao Ye's epic scenery art and emotion-stricken monster figures, along with feats like those of the half-demon and cherry demoness, set off a light bulb in her head. She approaches him to commission a long series of marketing materials picturing unlikely demon catchers in atmospheric battle scenes — housewives defending their infants like fierce beasts in a mountain war, a starstruck girl catching her demon catcher idol just before he falls off a windswept cliff, a mouse demon hovering above a clumsy cat demon, and more. The final reward will be his much-needed metal brush cap: a pricey full-face helmet resilient to all demonic attacks.

To the businesswoman's utter disappointment, Mao Ye executes his tasks half-heartedly the way he used to slap tourist figures onto his scenic paintings. But the proud woman hates two things: being wrong in judgment and giving up. She changes tack. Art is not her forte, but reading and influencing minds and hearts is. She orders him to draw portraits of her targeted clientele's pained, mischievous and willful inner monsters, a more relatable task to him. Mao Ye struggles to put himself in the clientele's shoes but does perform better at this task. She, however, is not satisfied, ordering him to study his subjects up-close in crowded markets away from distracting scenery for extended periods of time and redo every drawing until every tangled strand of emotion from the clientele's lives is palpable on the monsters. Next, she orders him to do the same for the people they protect and then for the demons they fend off. The step after that is to place combinations of the inner demons onto battle scenes. Only after that step is perfected too does she tell him to paint human and external demon coverings onto the characters, exhorting him to imagine how the coverings simultaneously exhibit and conceal those inner demons.

Mao Ye takes a step back and gasps at his final artworks. He has never expected a complete art noob to rectify his lifelong flaw. Again, what has he been doing with his thousand years of existence?

Episode 4: Demon Historian

An arsonist dragon demon dances around Mao Ye as he stumbles around in the heavy helmet crushing his ageing neck. When the paintbrush demon falls onto the grass, the dragon demon gleefully licks his helmet here and there with its breath of fire, turning his already blurred and obscured view into a sea of crimson. Mao Ye yelps in horror, momentarily forgetting that the fire will not damage the helmet. The dragon demon yawns and soars up and away, its orange scales glittering in the sunlight. It finds him too lame to kill or wound.

When Mao Ye relates the encounter to the businesswoman, she politely expresses her sympathy, before offering him more work in exchange for a pricier, lighter helmet with the same protective qualities. Well, his life experience does not really count for nothing. He detects a carefully concealed smirk from her. It is obvious that she has chosen the heavy helmet and now probably only a slightly improved version to keep him working for her. The paintbrush demon pushes instead for free enrollment in her best academy as partial remuneration, since his previous instructor has given up on him. When his skills are finally top-notch, he will be able to execute demon catching missions without damaging brush hair. The businesswoman, however, discloses that her better academies run entrance tests to sieve for ready students. She sweetly suggests, instead, that he starts at an academy at the lowest tier. What a fantastic money scheme. How many years will remain in his lifespan when he reaches a tier high enough?

While trudging home, the paintbrush demon has a despicable idea. He shall hand out a spare academy ad he has crafted to the dragon demon. Didn't she believe that everyone is a potential customer? The spectacular dragon flames will be free interior decor for the calculative businesswoman's premise. He guffaws but soon stops in his tracks. Where is the dragon lair?

At the hut, Mao Ye rummages through his stash of unsold scenery paintings and rejected scenic portraits. He pores over changes to landscapes in various locations over the millennium and tries to figure out how they may be linked to demon incidents he remember. After a week-long struggle, he finally starts to work out a means of identifying dragon lairs through the chronological changes.

With much trepidation, Mao Ye sneaks into the dragon demon's lair. But the dragon demon spots him in no time and advances menacingly. Mao Ye cannot escape fast enough. Desperate, the paintbrush demon recalls a leftover self-portrait from his sale of the day. He turns around and, shutting his eyes, flashes the portrait. The dragon demon pauses in surprise, before rolling its long, scaly body on the ground in wild laughter. Mao Ye quickly plants the ad next to it and slips away.

Back in his town, the paintbrush demon has a drink at an inn to settle his nerves. It happens that the businesswoman is there with her three toddlers too. As he watches the quartet blissfully tuck into their dinner from afar, pangs of guilt progressively hit him like a ton of bricks. Drinks have never tasted worse.

The next morning, Mao Ye wakes up to what he fears: news that the dragon demon is razing down the businesswoman's headquarters.

Episode 5: Standing in Somebody's Talons

Mao Ye rushes to the scene. The cherry demoness and various other demon catchers are already trying to subdue the dragon demon, which unfortunately metamorphoses into its last lifecycle stage, a demon of the second highest rank, before the horrified spectators' eyes. Desperate all over again, the paintbrush demon thinks back to the inn and frantically grabs a large piece of rice paper to paint on despite his great doubt. Spectators nearby watch his work in puzzlement, then in wonder. The paintbrush demon shakily shows the raging dragon demon the painting: a grand beautiful scene in alluring, amber tones of it and similar-looking dragon demons of smaller sizes blissfully tucking into a steamy dinner.

The dragon demon's tragic backstory is then played onscreen.

"Your life story left so deep an impression on me I could not forget the details despite my deteriorating memory. You don't really want to burn down anyone or anything. All you have yearned for is an apology for the witch hunt that destroyed your family. But my young dragon friend, dead people cannot apologize, and dying people cannot stand in your shoes, I mean, talons. They depart from this world believing they have been right all along. Look at art, on the other hand. Art — can submerge the most stubborn demon catchers in tears for the rest of their lives."

Mao Ye then confesses his role in luring the dragon demon here in front of the enormous crowd. He reflects on how the businesswoman does not truly deserve death for her non-murderous manipulativeness and how her innocent kids who inspired the painting do not deserve inevitable collateral harm, just like how the dragon demon's targets have not all endorsed the witch hunt. Make reparations together for the misdeeds of demons and demon catchers alike by informing and circulating such storied art, he earnestly proposes. And that way, the dragon demon's family will at least live on in fleshed-out narratives. The dragon demon's tears begin to flow out uncontrollably, eventually dousing the roaring flames.

After the incident, the businesswoman thanks Mao Ye for his intervention, yet terminates their collaboration with immediate effect. This time, he knows that he cannot blame her. Would he himself want to associate with a trusted person who once put his life and livelihood on the line? Still, he does one more thing for her, without compensation. To cope with her expanding franchise, the businesswoman has been dispatching letters to authorities, stores and renowned demon catchers for training grounds permits, magical weapons and instructor recruitment respectively. These in-demand parties, however, are practically buzzed all day long by numerous self-flying, audio-transmitting paper cranes conjured from such letters. So, Mao Ye paints exquisite art onto paper cranes, such that they would stand out, or maybe fly out, from the crowd.

As our paintbrush demon watches the painted paper cranes soar away, he thinks back to his triumphs and trials during these five episodes. He has another idea. So much for people's claims that you'll definitely turn stale and stubborn as you age.

Episode 6: Close Shave

With much festivity, Mao Ye launches an art-based demon catching support business with the following specialties:

Weapons: Emotive art (Funny portraits, empathetic portraits of loved ones, etc.)

Morale boosters: Perspective-changing art (Art similar to the demon catching academy ads)

Remediation and negotiation: Storied art

Reconnaissance: Copies of chronological records of landscape changes annotated with historical events

Networking: Visually arresting messenger paper cranes

As time goes by, the paintbrush demon picks up so many orders he has to search for helpers. Catching wind of this, some of the arson spectators amazed at his courage to own up to his mistakes and make reparations offer their paid services. Touched at the number of humans and demons who show up, Mao Ye publicly vows to deliver the best for their land through his business.

The business grows more and more successful. One day, however, a spurned blind spider demon from outside with extremely acute hearing storms through his business premise, stabbing all living and nonliving things in its way. Mao Ye looks in alarm as one after another of the helpers he has bonded with fall down in pools of blood. The giant spider demon speeds towards the youngest helper, a trembling, baby-faced 15-year-old. Mao Ye must make a decision, even though his helmet is not here.

Gritting his teeth, the paintbrush demon hurls himself at the spider demon. He valiantly reenacts moves drilled by his previous instructor. The spider demon slashes right at his hair. Mao Ye flinches yet holds his ground to fire off more moves. It is a relatively weak demon, so he should be able to ward it off in time. More and more of the hair falls to the floor. When at long last the spider demon collapses, conscious helpers stare aghast at Mao Ye's bald head.

Episode 7: Cherry-Picking

Some days Mao Ye pats himself for saving the boy. Some days he is too glad not to be a monster. Some days he drinks until he is deadwood over his evaporated art identity and career.

At the encouragement of a bright-eyed helper, now soon-to-be unemployed ex-helper, the bald paintbrush demon tries out painting in his human form, painting with his bare brush handle, and splatter painting. However, current results suggest it will take years for him to master any of them. His expertise in stroke techniques applied through his own brush hair was accumulated and refined over a millennium.

If only his helpers had his expertise, they would not need to disperse soon. That gives Mao Ye one last idea. While his art stocks dwindle, he begins converting the business to an art academy training humans and demons in his specialties.

And thus the premise becomes a wellspring of demon catching talent. Even the cherry demoness turns up for lessons. We learn that her demon catching skills deteriorated instead of climbing further under the tutelage of Mao Ye's previous instructor, a righteous man who unfortunately remains skeptical about demon merits. No matter how hard she worked at proving herself, the instructor saw on her only more and more evidence why she is a misfit for their line of work. The cherry demoness believes that art can be a great ancillary weapon in her demon catching career and that Mao Ye, as a fellow demon, will impart his skills with less bias.

Episode 8: A Bus

The cherry demoness' non-art-based combat skills turn out to be pretty solid, despite what her account might suggest. Yet that feedback does not diminish her curiosity to learn art-based combat. Her quick progress leaves everyone in the academy starry-eyed. Mao Ye grumbles to himself about having another art noob run over him but is amazed no less. The art academy students form a close-knit community, bouncing quirky ideas off each other and celebrating Mao Ye's birthdays in rambunctious style.

After one such birthday party, Mao Ye sits back on his rocking chair, contentedly gazing at all the artworks in his airy academy hall. He drifts into a deep sleep. The music turns ominous, and the screen goes black. When the light comes on again, however, we see that Mao Ye wakes up as a wistful senior care facility resident in the real world with no memories of his dream. The finale of Eternal Night Star River blares for the umpteenth time from the phone of a female relative of another resident. Amnesiac awakening experiences happen to many other demon artists in the academy as well, who turn out to be from various walks of life and age brackets. A couple of them cross swords in the passageway of a high-pressure office, never remembering they were comrades sharing a passion for art in the academy.

One academy student, the cherry demoness, has a habit of jotting down her dreams after waking up, however. She doodles warmth-suffused art academy scenes and grand battle scenes, featuring Mao Ye and her classmates, on a bus passing by the senior care facility and the office to the bakery she works at. What would it be like, she wonders, if one or more of them come up to her someday, telling her that they are real, that they shared the dream?

[tofueatingwokerati]

The Assisted Dying Bill

My letter to the House of Lords:

I’m writing to express my concerns about the assisted dying bill. While I support it in principle, I have reservations about its due diligence to safeguard vulnerable people from abuse and exploitation. The original safeguards have been watered down since it was first introduced, which is a cause for concern.

I previously created a draft email to Dignitas which still sits in my email client, which I’m calling my “exit plan.” I’m disabled with an invisible condition called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, which is severe. As things stand in this country, I don’t have a good prospect of improvement in my quality of life. This is due to government discrimination in welfare “reforms,” an ableist society that excludes us, and people who stigmatise us.

This is all before we get to a complete lack of medical access after 14 years of Tory defunding, with the NHS now prioritising outpatient and short-term care from funding and staff shortages. Therapies are gold dust for long-term care needs like mine, and even the NHS recently told me to go private knowing my sole income is hardship.

My prognosis and future look bleak, and my sole income is under threat. That’s enough to make anyone depressed and have ideation. 

I’ve often said that the most disabling part of my life isn’t my condition, but the way I’m treated by people and society. If I was properly supported, if people actually cared, and if we valued life more than the pound, I could live a fulfilling and meaningful life.

In a roundabout way, my “exit plan” has less to do with my disability than it does with how the world excludes and punishes me for being born disabled in a one-size-fits-all existence modelled around capitalism and not the human experience of existing for our own sake.

My concern is that this bill, once passed into law, without sufficient safeguards will be used and abused by the wrong people. The government have proven that are not trustworthy with the welfare and equity of their citizens, not with protest rights nor the equality act in drawing up policy. The threat of a BritCard that will block minority groups and disabled people from access furthers evidence that. Even the introduction of birth DNA testing gives me chills of the abuse just waiting to happen there, how long before we have a real life Gattaca?! Where ‘difference’ is engineered out of us before we’re even born. Where is the line?

Anyway, my ADHD brain has taken me on a tangent and apologises for the verbose message. I hope I have managed to make some sense and you can see why I am concerned. 

In short I do not trust this government nor any of them that have come before. All evidence points to a wholly irresponsible and exploitative model of society reinforced by a frankly corrupt government working at the behest of its donors and friends. Wes Streeting recently return from the Bilderberg summit, I’m not sure how much more compromised they can get. 

[the-path-to-redemption]

Hi I was scrolling through you blog and I saw the post about Rwby and the Racism issue and I was wondering how did Rwby failed in all 3 categories?

I have seen other POCs express their distain regarding fantasy racism and fantasy oppression because you are taking a real life minority experience and using it for your white race (Hunger Games and Bright are examples). Then we have some that says as long as that race is an allegory or being race coded is fine such as Zootopia. Did Rwby followed or try to followed these examples?

That moment when your blog is just chocked full of posts about this topic that you can't find the specific one-

So, I want to preface that this post is my perspective, and it will not always align with other POCs' opinions on similar matters. We're not a monolith, and I speak from my own experiences.

Long Post Ahead

I don't think I can answer the 3 categories you mentioned because I literally cannot remember which post has that. So I'm very sorry.

So I'll start with the next part. In matters regarding the Hunger Games and its usage of societal discrimination, I personally would not say that it's a bad example, and race plays a more subtle part in the totalitarian world of Panem. THG as a series is a commentary on what will happen when we let the government exploit and divide the people, keeping us under their thumb with a cruel system disguised as a form of social order rather than what it truly is. Hell, even the main villain of the series President Snow (spoiler ahead) in the prequel claimed that the Games are a method of showing order in a world thrust into chaos, that the tributes are part of a larger game of reminding everyone in Panem that they are only parts of a bigger machine in order to keep peace. Which the series clearly stated that what he's saying is propaganda, and the world isn't just full of woes. It is capable of love, kindness, and unity even in an environment where the people kill each other.

Sorry for the long rant, but I would highly recommend you read the series. Panem as a world setting isn't a fantasy perse, more like a hypothetical America or any similar nation where the discrimination based on race, class, and everything not considered "norm" is something inspired by real-life without making it a direct example, it's a series encompassing the struggles of being free and allowed to love without being oppressed, which can be seen by any race. I encourage you to get into a deeper analysis of this wonderful series, it's worth it.

And for Zootopia? I would not consider it allegorical. At all. It obviously takes inspiration from real-life racism, particularly that in the States, but just...

If you equate the predators in Zootopia, who are discriminated against because of their instincts to hunt prey and are faced with constant fear that they will kill their prey peers based on instinct or via drug, on any non-white groups in America, while the prey animals are white people? You... you see the issue, right?

You see the issue of making a fictional race that instinctually behaves very differently from humans via eating others an allegory to real-life races, especially black people, right???

That's why I wanted RWBY and the Faunus to be their own thing because the premise itself is fantastical. Don't Write Real Life Racism with Fantastical Allegories. PLEASE. RWBY shot itself in the fucking foot when they equate the Faunus to Black Civil Rights Issues when they aren't educated enough on the topic to even discuss it. If that was what they wanted, just write black people. There are other ways where you can write a fantasy racism plot without allegorizing it to real-life racism. Just write the fucking latter.

RWBY failed, and it failed badly. Even if you don't have the whole Faunus be about Black Civil Rights, the writers still INTENTIONALLY write a disabled child slave fighting for his rights after being abused by a corporation to be the VILLAIN. Not just any kind of villain, but the kind to abuse his loved ones, kill his own kind, aim for mass murder, and never actually gave a shit about his rights. That alone should tell you enough about whether or not RWBY failed or not.

[sister-lucifer]

can people with adhd say the r slur

so obviously as one autistic (possibly adhd) person i don’t speak for the entire community so take this opinion with a grain of salt but

the r slur was used to refer to people with intellectual, learning, or developmental disabilities

adhd is considered a developmental and learning disability

if you had adhd in 1940, they would call you mentally retarded and you could be lobotomized

so no i don’t mind if people with adhd say the r slur because they fall under the learning/developmental disability umbrella even though people may consider adhd to be ‘less serious’ or ‘less severe’ because it’s usually virtually invisible

but frankly whatever the case i’m pretty sure the autism community has significantly bigger more urgent issues than adhd people saying this that or the other. like, you know, job discrimination and medical discrimination and being unable to foster/adopt and being exploited and abused and misdiagnosed and eugenics

i could care less

[monty-june]

the revolution (starting may or before)

• it all starts on the earliest last day of school on the planet. someone has had enough. they've decided they want to get the world together.

- so have many other youthlibs even in america, and the uk.

• eventually i want to get everyone's shit together, too, and after effort in persisting, i do.

- i manifest that all important topics, especially youth oppression awareness, go mainstream on every platform

- everyone's algorithm and everything else tells them perfectly what they need to hear, and they know how all of our struggles are connected

(of racism, queerphobia, the patriarchy, ableism, even adultism, etc.)

and finally want, and know they need, to go against the system because it affects them all

• everyone boycotts everyone complicit and i mean EVRYONE 👹

• we overthrow the world in the best way possible

- in a way that can let all abusers and monsters formerly supported by yt supremacy rot and die

after revolution is won (midsummer)

• capitalism is no more

• cultism, religious indoctrination, child isolation of any kind, and all kinds of slavery & exploitation are illegal

• we youth have our human rights again

• no one has the right to silence us in any way unless it's of unfair hatred (which, that's not happening

- same thing for all oppressed people

• all people w/ disabilities have ultimate access

• no environmental racism

• pride themed & welcome spaces everywhere for all queers

- pride merch available everywhere nearby

- rainbow “capitalism” is now supporting queer ppl in need

• no yt supremacist media in a positive or joking light allowed

• MORE DIVERSE MEDIA! diversity in disabled ppl, race, ethnicity, culture, sexual or romantic orientation, you name it, all w/o yt supremacy

• landback

• ALL kinds of discrimination are punishable as a crime if repeated after warning, the lightest sentence being detention

(yep, including whispering the N word, *insert racist non-black boi name here 😂*, ur not slick anymore.)

- discrimination is now known worldwide, so it's now ultimately stigmatized and condemned in society.

• all products are made in/with use of only ethical ways

[hrt-shpd-systm]

The Political Landscape for Transgender Rights and Its Implications

Anna Bojorqiez

Many people don’t even realize that transgender rights are under attack, or care about the “culture war”, the cultural conflict that has become much more prominent due to failing institutions, growing inequalities, and technology that encourages people to cluster in their cultural groups.

But the fact of the matter is that this culture war is going to harm the people it is targeting. Former President Donald Trump has promised to ban gender-affirming care for minors, and to go after gender-affirming healthcare providers.

During this past years Conservative Political Action Coalition (CPAC), which is a political rally full of speeches, panel discussions, breakout sessions, and networking breakfasts. Michael Knowels, a political pundit with conservative values on the media company known as the Daily Wire, has called for the eradication of “transgenderism”.

The state of transgender rights to gender-affirming healthcare is dire, and help from cishet allies is needed.

In this essay I will define those who stand in the way of gender-affirming healthcare and the context surrounding it, the implications of banning it, and then provide solutions to making gender affirming care a national right.

My Personal Experience

As a transgender person myself, I feel the impact first-hand. There are nights when I cry myself to sleep, knowing that my trans siblings in conservative states might or will have their access to gender affirming care cut off by these invasive laws and consequently die out of fear that the same could happen to me if a Republican takes office as president again.

It is a traumatic experience to watch our rights get slowly stripped away, state by state, and it is an experience that is not talked about enough within spaces occupied by cishet people.

LGB Drop the T

Even in the gay community, there is a growing number of gay people in the UK who are aligning themselves with the LGB Alliance, which is a trans-exclusive radical feminist (TERF) group.

TERFs, as the name would suggest, are radical feminists who reject the inclusion and recognition of transgender people in feminist spaces.

However, this differs from the intersectional feminist ideas of intersectionality, which takes account the different ways in which women experience discrimination, whereas TERF feminism is a form of white feminism and has a tendency to overshadow not only the struggles of queer women, but women of color, disabled women, and women in other minority groups.

This puts TERFs in a weird position where they align more with fascists that believe in authoritarianism and the exclusion of people who don’t fit into their definitions of “normal”.

JK Rowling And Matt Walsh Bond Over Transphobia

In fact, the author of the Harry Potter book series and well known TERF activist J.K. Rowling, has made numerous transphobic dog whistles on twitter.

She has also praised the right-wing political commentator for the Daily Wire who has directly quoted fascists’ speeches, Matt Walsh, for his What Is a Woman documentary, stating that the film did a “good job exposing the incoherence of gender identity theory and some of the harms it's done.”

This is just a minuscule example of how even liberal people who consider themselves openminded individuals can just as easily turn around and stab the trans community in the back.

No, Were Not Grooming Your Kids.

With that said, many conservatives and TERFs have repeatedly made the claim that transgender people are “grooming kids” into transitioning, which is a process by which a predator builds trust and emotional connection with someone, usually a minor, for the purposes of abusing or exploiting the person who is being groomed.

There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that transgender people are grooming children. There is, however, ample evidence to show that gender-affirming healthcare, such as Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) and puberty blockers, greatly improves the lives of transgender minors.

Why Minors Are Coming Out and the History of Left-Handedness

One might be asking, “if trans people aren’t grooming kids, why are so many minors coming out and transitioning?” The answer to that is simple.

If you are familiar with the left-handedness graph from the beginning of the 20th century to the beginning of the 21st century, you will see that left-handedness was at a low. Over the years it began to increase, and for similar reasons the transgender population is increasing. In the early 1900s, around 3% of the population identified as lefthanded. Over the course of the next 60 years, we saw an increase in the amount of left-handed people, but after the 1960s, the graph begins to even out.

This is because in the 1900s, there was a lot of religious and societal stigma around left-handedness, and people who were left-handed were forced to use their right hands, and wouldn’t admit to being left-handed due to the potential social backlash. (10)

Similarly, up until recently, most people didn’t even know that transgender people existed, and those that did often used offensive terms to describe transgender folks, which contributed to an environment of hostility towards transgender people.

For so long, so many trans people were afraid to come out due to the social backlash that came with it. But in the late 2010s and early 2020s, trans people were just barely starting to be shown in some mainstream media outlets in a positive light, and more people started to come out overtime.

Overtime, as acceptance of the transgender community begins to grow, the percentage of transgender folks will start to even out, just like it did in the left-handedness graph.

Left-handed people did not groom right-handed people into becoming left-handed, acceptance of left-handedness increased. In the same way, transgender adults are not grooming kids to become transgender; transgender kids are just starting to feel safe enough to come out, and it would be silly to suggest otherwise.

Banning Gender Affirming Healthcare Is Going to Kill Us

 In addition, there is evidence to suggest that these bills that are banning gender-affirming care for transgender people, particularly minors, have been and are going to increase suicidality in the trans community.

In a policy analysis by Journal of Law Med Ethics, it mentions that these laws impact the trans community by shaping the contexts within which they receive social services, healthcare, and engage with their communities, and by “creating an overarching social landscape within which anti-trans sentiment and rhetoric cultivate misunderstanding of, hostility towards, and even violence against trans folks."

In a 2018 study by the American Academy of Pediatrics found that “nearly 14% of [transgender] adolescents reported a previous suicide attempt,” while the Journal of Law Med Ethics policy analysis found that the suicide attempt rate for transgender youths in 2022 was 19%.

The suicide attempt rate increase may seem small and insignificant, but that is a major increase. It is no coincidence that the suicide attempt rate has gone up as the amount of anti-trans bills being proposed goes up. This goes to show just how dangerous these laws are to the transgender population, and the need for everyone, including cisgender people, to stand up for what is right.

What Can We Do?

The situation in the US surrounding gender-affirming healthcare rights may seem hopeless to some, especially trans folks, but there are ways to help.

Cis allies need to talk to other cis people about the issue, spread awareness, and advocate for trans rights. People who are anti-trans aren’t going to listen to other trans people.

Cis people need to stop voting for the Republicans, and consider voting for a progressive candidate. Engage with lawmakers, especially local lawmakers. Attend townhall meetings, write letters, make phone calls, and use social media to urge them to oppose or repeal discriminatory legislation with evidence-based arguments and personal experiences.

And if all else fails, go to protests and make your voice heard.

Final Thoughts on the Issue

Hopefully this essay will clear up any misconceptions about the political implications of banning gender-affirming care.

In conclusion, the rights of the transgender community are being stripped away state by state. This will cause irreparable harm to transgender people, and will result in an increased suicide rate among those who are gender-nonconforming.

We need to meet each other where were at and ask questions to better understand each other, engage with lawmakers, and vote. It is vital to the survival of trans community that we take action now.

Biography

Anna Bojorquez is a college student taking an English 101 class. She is passionate about the transgender community. She enjoys playing her guitar, writing music, reading, witchcraft, and learning. She is majoring in social work to become a licensed therapist and a mental health legislation advisor.

[azeez-unv]

Suggestions for Inexpensive Volunteer Opportunities

By Azeez Ismail | National UN Volunteer, India

Introduction:

You don’t need an organization to serve society. You, as a single volunteer, are an NGO. You are already part of the world’s largest organization—the United Nations—as a National UN Volunteer. Own it. Represent it. Let the world know: “I am a National UN Volunteer.”

Volunteer Opportunities (Inexpensive & Impactful):

1. Be a Blessing Daily: Make every encounter meaningful. A kind word or genuine attention can transform someone’s day.

2. Weekend Teaching: Dedicate just two hours on weekends to teach children, especially those who lack guidance.

3. Record Audiobooks for the Visually Impaired: Use a good mic and your voice to open up the world of books for blind students—right from your home.

4. Support Educational & Livelihood Programs:

▪️Teach soft skills, language, computer literacy.

▪️Train youth and women to become employable.

5. Life Skills Through Sports & Arts: Volunteer with initiatives using sports, music, or arts for character-building in schools.

6. Support Public Institutions: Hospitals, shelters, and schools always need support. Customize your help based on your skills and time.

7. Blood Donation & Health Awareness: Join or organize blood donation camps and hygiene awareness drives.

8. Counseling & Awareness Drives: Educate on HIV, mental health, and personality development.

9. Share Creative Skills: Teach music, crafts, dance, or drawing to children in underprivileged communities.

10. Social Media Volunteering: Help organizations grow by managing their online presence and spreading their message.

11. Rural Development: Help in digital literacy, knowledge centers, and natural calamity relief projects.

12. Skill Training: Offer sessions in tailoring, computers, spoken English, or any job-oriented skill.

13. Identify Out-of-School Children: Create local campaigns to help them get back into classrooms.

14. Be a Listener: Sometimes, being present and listening is the greatest form of service.

15. Celebrate With the Forgotten: Share food, time, and love at orphanages, old age homes, and leprosy centers on special occasions.

16. Build a Volunteer Network: Start with a few like-minded people. Meet regularly and act together.

17. Promote Environmental Awareness: Plant trees, clean local areas, or support zero-waste practices.

18. Promote Child Adoption Awareness: Guide people on legal and safe adoption processes and support abandoned children.

19. Civic Awareness: Educate people about government departments and their functions.

20. Support Senior Citizens: Spread awareness against elder abuse and offer time or assistance.

21. Heal Family Bonds: Help bring harmony to broken relationships in your extended family.

22. Road Safety Awareness: Conduct campaigns to promote traffic discipline and safe driving.

23. RTI (Right to Information) Education: Teach others how to use RTI to demand accountability and transparency.

24. Pen Pals for Blind Students: Pair visually impaired children with writing assistants for exams and correspondence.

25. Health Emergency Preparedness: Teach basic first-aid and volunteer at health events like vaccination drives.

26. Empower Women: Support victims of domestic violence, dowry harassment, and gender discrimination.

27. Support Persons with Disabilities: Provide tools, training, and motivation to help them lead independent lives.

28. Health Camps: Organize or assist in free health check-ups and medicine distribution.

29. Support Vulnerable Kids: Focus on

▪️First-generation learners

▪️Single-parent families

▪️Economically disadvantaged children

▪️Kids from Grades 6–10 (high dropout risk)

30. Host Free Workshops Monthly: Topics can include:

▪️Basic learning

▪️Talent grooming

▪️Social responsibility

▪️Life skills

Final Thoughts:

Stop chasing NGOs that exploit your potential for profit. You are enough. Save just 2% of your annual income—Rs. 2000 for every Rs. 1 lakh—and do charity directly. Give by your own hands. Let your service carry the name of your parents, ancestors, or teachers. Make your giving personal and powerful.

Avoid unnecessary expenses on meetings, conclaves, and conferences. Use those funds for real impact. Remember, charity is not just a deed—it’s a legacy.

God bless you.

Serve with love. Rise with grace.

[bofeiham]

Psychophobia: A Structural Analysis of Societal Fear and Systemic Discrimination Against Individuals with Mental Disorders

I. Conceptual Framework of Psychophobia

A. Definition and Theoretical Basis

1. Operational definition: Pathological fear/aversion towards psychiatric conditions and affected individuals

2. Comparative analysis with related concepts (stigmatization vs. phobic response)

3. Historical evolution from medieval "madhouse" concepts to modern diagnostic labels

B. Epidemiological Data and Sociodemographic Patterns

1. Global prevalence statistics (WHO 2023 report: 68% nations report systemic discrimination)

2. Cross-cultural manifestations: Comparative study of Eastern vs. Western societies

3. High-risk demographics: Analysis of double discrimination against minority mental health patients

II. Mechanisms of Stigmatization

A. Media-driven Stereotype Formation

1. Content analysis of 500+ film/TV portrayals (1990-2020): 83% depict mentally ill as violent (APA, 2021)

2. News media framing patterns: Crime reporting bias (7.6x overrepresentation in violent crime contexts)

B. Institutional Reinforcement

1. "Sanism" in legal systems: Competency presumption challenges

2. Employment discrimination metrics: 62% conceal diagnoses fearing job loss (NAMI Workforce Study 2022)

III. Clinical and Social Consequences

A. Patient-level Impacts

1. Treatment avoidance cycle: 40% delayed seeking help due to stigma (Lancet Psychiatry 2023)

2. "Secondary Disability" phenomenon: Social functioning impairment exceeding primary symptoms

B. Structural Violence Manifestations

1. Housing discrimination patterns: 2.3x higher homelessness rates vs. general population

2. Healthcare inequities: 58% report substandard medical care when diagnosed revealed (JAMA 2022)

IV. Deconstructing Myths: Evidence-based Reality Check

A. Violence Risk Demystification

1. Meta-analysis of 70 studies: Mental illness accounts for <4% violence causation

2. Comparative risk ratios: Substance abuse (8.2x) vs. schizophrenia (1.8x) as predictors

B. Functional Capacity Evidence

1. Post-treatment workforce integration: 74% employment sustainability with proper support

2. Neurodiversity advantages: Case studies in tech sector pattern recognition roles

V. Legal and Ethical Dimensions

A. Disability Rights Controversy

1. ADA classification debates: Symptom fluctuation vs. permanent disability models

2. UNCRPD implementation gaps: 34% nations lack mental health-specific anti-discrimination laws

B. Privacy Protection Challenges

1. Mandatory reporting dilemmas: Therapeutic confidentiality vs. public safety concerns

2. Digital era risks: Biometric data exploitation in workplace mental health monitoring

VI. Transformative Strategies

A. Systemic Intervention Model

1. Anti-sanist legal reforms:

- Jury instruction modernization

- Supported decision-making frameworks

2. Workplace neurodiversity initiatives:

- IBM Neurodiversity Program success metrics (37% productivity increase)

B. Social Neuroscience Applications

1. Empathy-building VR simulations: MIT Media Lab's "Walk in My Mind" project outcomes

2. Cognitive reframing techniques: Contact theory implementation in school curricula

C. Technological Safeguards

1. AI-assisted discrimination detection: Natural language processing of job postings/rental ads

2. Blockchain medical records: Selective disclosure systems for workplace accommodations

VII. Future Research Directions

A. Longitudinal studies on generational attitude shifts post-mental health education reforms

B. Neuroethical implications of advanced psychiatric predictive technologies

C. Cross-cultural analysis of psychophobia manifestations in AI-driven societies

This restructured framework adopts an interdisciplinary approach integrating clinical psychiatry, social neuroscience, and legal studies. The outline emphasizes evidence-based argumentation while maintaining critical analysis of systemic barriers. Quantitative metrics and recent research references (2021-2023) enhance academic rigor, with proposed solutions balancing ethical considerations and practical implementability.

[deveshmaharaj]

Devesh Maharaj Trinidad - Legal Remedies for Workplace Harassment

Workplace harassment is a pervasive issue that undermines employee well-being and the overall productivity of organizations. Addressing it effectively requires a robust understanding of legal frameworks, supportive mechanisms, and actionable steps. Advocate Devesh Maharaj, a distinguished legal expert in Trinidad, shares valuable insights on navigating workplace harassment and exploring legal remedies available to employees.

Understanding Workplace Harassment

Workplace harassment encompasses a wide range of unwelcome behaviors, including verbal, physical, or visual conduct that creates an intimidating or hostile work environment. Common forms include:

Sexual Harassment: Unwanted advances, inappropriate remarks, or physical contact.

Discriminatory Harassment: Bullying or unequal treatment based on race, gender, religion, disability, or other protected characteristics.

Power Dynamics: Abuses of authority, where superiors exploit their position to demean subordinates.

Cyber Harassment: Online bullying, including emails or messages targeting individuals.

Recognizing these behaviors is the first step toward addressing the issue.

Employee Rights in Trinidad

In Trinidad, several laws protect employees from workplace harassment. Advocate Devesh Maharaj emphasizes the importance of understanding these rights:

Equal Opportunity Act: This legislation prohibits discrimination and harassment based on attributes like race, ethnicity, gender, or disability.

Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA): Employers are mandated to provide a safe and healthy working environment, which includes addressing harassment.

Employment Contracts: Many organizations include anti-harassment clauses in employment agreements, reinforcing zero-tolerance policies.

Steps to Take if You Experience Harassment

Advocate Maharaj advises employees to act decisively while navigating workplace harassment. Here are the recommended steps:

1. Document the Incidents

Maintain a detailed record of incidents, including dates, times, locations, individuals involved, and specific behaviors. This documentation serves as crucial evidence if legal action becomes necessary.

2. Review Workplace Policies

Examine your employer’s anti-harassment policies, complaint procedures, and the reporting structure. Most organizations outline these in employee handbooks or internal communications.

3. Report the Harassment

File a formal complaint with the designated personnel, such as HR or an ethics officer. Advocate Maharaj advises reporting harassment promptly to ensure timely intervention.

4. Seek Support

Discuss the situation with trusted colleagues, mentors, or counselors. Support networks can provide emotional strength and practical advice.

5. Consult a Legal Expert

If internal mechanisms fail, consult a seasoned attorney like Advocate Devesh Maharaj. A legal professional can guide you on the appropriate course of action, including filing a formal complaint with relevant authorities or initiating a lawsuit.

Legal Remedies Available

In Trinidad, employees subjected to harassment can pursue the following legal remedies:

1. Filing a Complaint with the Equal Opportunity Commission

The Equal Opportunity Commission investigates claims of discrimination and harassment. Employees can lodge complaints for impartial mediation or resolution.

2. Civil Lawsuits

Victims can initiate civil lawsuits against perpetrators or negligent employers for damages, including emotional distress, financial losses, and punitive compensation.

3. Reporting to OSHA

Advocate Maharaj stresses the importance of reporting unsafe work environments to OSHA. The agency has the authority to investigate and mandate corrective measures.

4. Criminal Action

In severe cases involving assault, stalking, or threats, employees can file criminal complaints. Law enforcement authorities ensure perpetrators are held accountable under criminal law.

Employer Responsibilities

Advocate Maharaj highlights that employers play a pivotal role in fostering a safe workplace. Key responsibilities include:

Implementing Robust Policies: Clear guidelines on acceptable behavior, reporting mechanisms, and consequences for violations.

Training Programs: Regular training sessions to sensitize employees and management about harassment.

Prompt Action: Investigating complaints thoroughly and taking swift corrective measures.

Support Systems: Offering counseling and assistance to affected employees.

Advocate Devesh Maharaj s Commitment

Advocate Devesh Maharaj has dedicated his legal career to championing employee rights in Trinidad. His expertise in employment law and unwavering commitment to justice make him a trusted ally for victims of workplace harassment. Maharaj emphasizes the importance of empowering employees through knowledge and access to legal recourse.

“Every employee deserves a workplace free from fear and intimidation. By understanding your rights and taking decisive action, you can reclaim your dignity and foster a culture of respect,” asserts Advocate Maharaj.

Conclusion

Handling workplace harassment requires courage, awareness, and support. Advocate Devesh Maharaj’s guidance underscores the necessity of leveraging legal remedies to address grievances effectively. Whether through internal mechanisms or judicial interventions, employees have the tools to combat harassment and advocate for a respectful and inclusive work environment.

If you or someone you know is facing workplace harassment, seek advice from experts like Advocate Devesh Maharaj in Trinidad. Empower yourself with knowledge and take the necessary steps to ensure justice and workplace harmony.

Source:-https://medium.com/@DeveshMaharajUNC/devesh-maharaj-trinidad-legal-remedies-for-workplace-harassment-61fe3ef3938b

[lifechanyuan]

51 Elementary Self-improvement Practices

12) Do not compete with others. In public places, if there is a misunderstanding or conflict, regardless of who is right, always apologize first, be courteous, and do not argue. Take the blame upon yourself and concede the reason to others. For example, if someone on a bicycle collides with you, apologize for blocking their path, even if you are injured.

13) Do not expose others' secrets, point out their shortcomings, criticize their faults, or discuss their mistakes.

14) Do not seek advantages, and do not pick up lost items. Do not exploit others' misfortunes to gain benefits, take advantage of their unpreparedness to harm them, deceive the honest, or bully the kind-hearted. Do not opportunistically steal or fish in troubled waters. Do not buy items that are much more valuable than their price, do not touch what does not belong to you, and do not pick up valuables found on the road.

15) Seek a home that is well-lit, well-ventilated, clean, and tidy. Do not aspire for luxury or flaunt wealth. Refrain from hoarding treasures or money at home to prevent arousing jealousy, covetousness from thieves, robbery from miscreants, or envy from adversaries.

16) Follow the main path and do not learn petty skills. The main paths include professions like farming, commerce, academics, military, and politics. Petty skills include matchmaking, fortune-telling, astrology, face reading, counseling, massage, magic, Taoist practices, gambling, martial arts, sorcery, performing arts, stock speculation, stamp collecting, theft, and begging. Do not learn these petty skills yourself but do not belittle or mock those who practice them. Respect others' choices.

17) Treat the world as one family and spread love globally. Do not discriminate against any ethnicity, and do not let race, skin color, history, social systems, or economic status dictate your attitude. Similarly, do not harbor resentment towards people from developed capitalist countries because you feel compassion for those in poor areas. This way, you can peacefully enjoy life anywhere in the world. As long as your existence does not harm others, animals, or plants, no disaster or misfortune will befall you.

18) Treat everyone equally. Do not harm the disabled, the poor, or those who are widowed and lonely. Do not treat people differently based on their status or wealth.

19) Do not participate in any form of subversive conspiracy. Be open, honest, and unselfish in all matters, and do not harbor deceitful intentions.

20) Do not engage in or promote any form of superstition.

21) Do not believe in, create, spread, or propagate rumors.

22) Do not withhold wages or benefits from subordinates or servants, and do not obstruct others' career advancements.

23) Do not be jealous of others, and do not curse your rivals or enemies.

24) Keep promises and be punctual. If an unavoidable situation causes a delay, promptly notify the other party and apologize for the inconvenience.

25) Be realistic in all matters. Do not exaggerate, understate, or lie.

26) Dress, behave, and conduct yourself in a manner consistent with common people.

27) Do not be picky about food, do not be extravagant, and do not waste.

28) Avoid places of conflict and disputes, and do not inquire about bizarre or abnormal matters.

29) Return borrowed items promptly. Compensate for any damage and repay borrowed money with interest.

30) Avoid cunning words, obscene language, and vulgar behavior.

31) Mind your own business and do not meddle in others' affairs. Do not offer help if someone does not ask for it.

32) Repay kindness, forget grievances, and do not seek revenge. Do not keep track of the favors you have done.

33) Do not indulge in banquets or parties, and do not stay too long at friends' or relatives' homes.

34) Do not abuse domestic animals, and do not kill animals indiscriminately.

35) Maintain personal and public hygiene. Do not spit, urinate, defecate, or litter indiscriminately.

36) Avoid smoking, drink less alcohol, do not use drugs, minimize medication, do not donate blood, avoid blood transfusions, do not consume blood or blood-containing meat, and do not commit suicide or self-harm. Do not celebrate birthdays, indulge in ostentation, gamble or steal.

to be continued

[learnmorewithus]

What Does the Level 3 Certificate in Adult Social Care Really Teach? Insights and Learning Outcomes

The Level 3 Certificate in Preparing to Work in Adult Social Care is designed for individuals who aspire to enter or advance in the adult social care sector. This qualification provides foundational knowledge and practical skills that are crucial for delivering high-quality care to adults, especially those who may have physical, mental, or emotional challenges. Here’s an overview of what the certificate covers, along with the insights and learning outcomes students can expect:

1. Understanding the Social Care Sector

The certificate begins by introducing students to the adult social care sector, its key principles, and the different types of care settings available (e.g., residential care, home care, nursing homes, etc.). Students learn about:

The role of social care workers and how they fit into the broader health and social care system.

The values and principles of care, such as promoting dignity, respect, and the rights of individuals.

The different care settings and the various roles within those settings, helping students understand the context of their future employment.

2. Person-Centered Care

A key concept in adult social care is person-centered care, which ensures that care plans are designed around the individual’s needs, preferences, and values. The certificate emphasizes:

Understanding the importance of personalization in care delivery.

How to respect and respond to the preferences of individuals, ensuring that their dignity and autonomy are upheld.

Learning how to work collaboratively with individuals to create care plans that are tailored to their unique needs.

3. Communication Skills in Social Care

Effective communication is fundamental in adult social care, as it helps build trust between caregivers and individuals receiving care. This module teaches:

Verbal and non-verbal communication skills, including how to interact with individuals with specific communication needs (e.g., people with dementia or disabilities).

How to use communication to build relationships, encourage positive behavior, and manage difficult situations.

The role of active listening, maintaining confidentiality, and respecting boundaries.

4. Health and Safety in Social Care

Health and safety are paramount in any care setting. Students learn essential practices to maintain a safe and healthy environment for both care recipients and workers, including:

The principles of infection control to prevent the spread of illness, particularly in vulnerable groups.

Risk assessments and how to identify, assess, and minimize potential hazards in care environments.

Moving and handling techniques to safely assist individuals with mobility challenges without causing harm to themselves or others.

5. Safeguarding and Duty of Care

One of the most critical components of the qualification is understanding the responsibilities around safeguarding vulnerable individuals and ensuring their safety. This includes:

Identifying abuse and neglect in vulnerable adults and knowing how to report concerns.

The concept of duty of care, where care workers must act in the best interest of the individuals they care for.

The importance of safeguarding policies and how to follow protocols to protect individuals from harm or exploitation.

6. Supporting Equality and Diversity

Adult social care workers are required to understand and promote equality, diversity, and inclusion in their work. The certificate explores:

The different cultural, social, and religious backgrounds of individuals and how to respect and respond to these in care settings.

Recognizing and addressing discrimination and ensuring fair and equal treatment for all individuals in care.

Supporting individuals in a way that empowers them, regardless of their background or circumstances.

7. Personal Development and Reflection

Throughout the course, students are encouraged to reflect on their own learning and development. The qualification teaches:

Self-awareness and recognizing one’s strengths and areas for improvement.

Reflective practice, which involves assessing one’s own actions and behaviors in providing care, and using this reflection to improve future practice.

Setting goals for personal development and career progression within the care sector.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of the Level 3 Certificate in Preparing to Work in Adult Social Care, students will have developed:

A thorough understanding of the social care sector and their role within it.

Person-centered care skills, ensuring they can deliver care that prioritizes the individual’s needs and preferences.

Communication expertise, allowing them to engage effectively with individuals from diverse backgrounds and with various needs.

Health and safety competence, ensuring that they can manage risks and maintain safe working environments.

The ability to safeguard individuals and handle any concerns regarding abuse or neglect with professionalism and care.

A commitment to equality and diversity, ensuring that all individuals receive fair, respectful, and compassionate care.

Self-reflection and growth, empowering them to continue developing professionally within the adult care sector.

Conclusion

The Level 3 Certificate in Preparing to Work in Adult Social Care equips individuals with the foundational skills and knowledge to begin a fulfilling career in the adult care industry. By covering essential topics such as person-centered care, communication, health and safety, safeguarding, and equality, this qualification ensures that students are well-prepared to provide high-quality care in a range of adult social care settings. Whether you're starting your career in social care or looking to enhance your existing knowledge, this certificate is a crucial stepping stone toward making a real difference in the lives of others.