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There's so much about it that is fucked and it fucks me up more seeing people dogpile onto folks who are clearly grieving and afraid. Or worse, trying to profit from this moment because solidarity is a commodity.

Literally makes me sick

It has been another awful week tbh.

Brianna Ghey's murder hit me harder than I thought I could be hit by these things any more.

The fact that her death has become discourse just makes me want to choke people. Motherfuckers policing language and some fuckwits daring, DARING, to turn up to vigils with political party materials.

I am going to a vigil tomorrow night and I don't know if I will be able to restrain myself if someone tries to give me an SWP placard or some shit.

It'd be cold, if the rage wasn't so hot.

[Fuck you.]

My parent's generation had a phrase that defined them. It sums up their whole ethos. "Greed is Good." Those three words contain the sum total of their politics. It will be the legacy that they leave behind. The rot that they put out to infect the rest of the world.

The rest of us have one too.

I thought about different ways to say this; I could use a lot of fancy words and dress up the core conceit to make it palatable, intellectual, maybe even convincing. But that wouldn't be truthful. For us, we can sum it all up in two words:

Fuck you.

Oh, there was a time when it could have been something else.

We gave you the chance. We begged you to compromise with us. We plead with you to row back just a little bit, to just lessen the misery that you inflict on the rest of us. You said no. Greed is good, right?

Well fuck you.

Fuck you.

Fuck you.

You've made a world that wants us dead. You've burned our future to fuel your present. You looked us in the eye and you told us that you'd rather kill us than be inconvenienced for even a second.

Fuck you.

I can hear your mewling already. That's not constructive. That's not positive. That's not helpful. That's not going to convince anybody. At least Greed is Good contains the hope that there is something good to come, right?

Fuck you.

There's nothing good in this world.

Nothing will ever be good again.

But I've still got spite, so.

Fuck you.

You want me to die?

Fuck you.

I will live long enough to make sure that your grave is soaked in piss. It won't change anything, but it'll make me smile.

Fuck you.

Or kill me.

Thanks for the tips! Definitely all helpful.

I'm still not quite there on the voice thing but I think I'll get there with a bit more practice. It's a pain and I'm starting to see why 'content creators' burn out making themselves do this shit daily/weekly. I'm definitely going to take this at my own pace.

May just work around the other visual aspect by doing voiceover on royalty free clips / relevant news clips / good images rather than appearing myself on camera at all. Aside from my own issues with my appearance, I think that might be more entertaining than the costume anyway.

My Dad had a stroke over the weekend. He's as okay as you can be after something like that - he's back home, on some drugs and doesn't expect any serious long term consequences.

He blamed work for the amount of stress it put him under. They've given him a whole two weeks to recover before he's expected to be back to it.

After having last week off I went back to work and immediately had three time sensitive crises that my coworkers had left for me to deal with on my return.

Interesting bit of synchronicity there.

There were more delays as my housemate was stuck away for longer than I would have liked and then some personal stuff came up.

Began filming today and learned:

1) This is kind of fun.

2) I hate literally everything about my voice and appearance.

3) All voice feminisation software is shit OR my voice is uniquely ill suited to it.

Don't really want to put my voice out there unaltered so I'll have to find some sort of workaround on that. It's going to take me forever to figure out filming and editing though so I've got some time before that's pressing I guess.

I've slowly dialed down my planned output from like... maybe I can get 6 out this year to maybe I can get this first one done before June. 

No, that's a misreading. My point is that it could be used that way and nothing in the system uniquely prevents it from going the route of the USA. In fact, I specifically pointed out that Canada is picking up a lot of US right wing crazy lately, and even gave examples.

I said on multiple occasions that it probably isn't being used that way yet. I showed how it could be, pointed out that medical professionals have a history of acting with impunity to vulnerable people, pointed out Canada already gets rid of "themuns" (indigenous people, specifically) in much the same way the USA does to Black people, and pointed out that Canada is not somehow uniquely culturally immune to being awful, or at least that if it does that immunity is waning.

It's not about There Is Definitely Active Genocide In Canada Aimed At Trans People. It's about Canada has been genociding its indigenous people without so much as a fucking "huh whats up with this" for decades, it's getting infected with USA far-right conspiracy madness, and the system has a tool that can be used to beat the minorities to death with.

It is, in short, about RISK FACTORS. Which I think I've shown are pretty fucking reasonable in this instance, fucking thank you.

I thought we were both being pretty clear about this but apparently not.

Yeah okay that's definitely what I've been saying this whole time you got me

I'm afraid if you think bigotry isn't a problem in UK healthcare you are just wrong.

'While there has been a small drop in the maternal mortality rate for Black women in recent MBRRACE reports, this bleak picture has not changed in over a decade. We remain deeply concerned that Black and Brown people's basic human rights to safety, dignity and equality in pregnancy and childbirth are not being protected, respected or upheld.

https://www.birthrights.org.uk/2021/11/11/new-mbrrace-report-shows-black-women-still-four-times-more-likely-to-die-in-pregnancy-and-childbirth/

This is also a fairly impressive deep dive on complaining about trans healthcare in the UK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1eWIshUzr8&t=5s

Abigail has massive privilege in a bunch of ways. She's fairly wealthy, she's white, she's pretty, and she has the free time to take the complaint beyond the normal process because she works for herself so she could afford to spend hours upon hours chasing people down, demanding meetings, etc.

The system is still as the system is and there is no sign it is going to change for the better. They are doubling down on the issues in the current system instead.

There's a lot more on ableism within medical institutions as well, I have seen some real horrible reactions to mental health particularly, but tbh I think that's enough to be going on with. If you haven't encountered these situations that's great; I promise you, they exist and the systems you are supposed to use to hold them accountable simply do not function. If you do complain, you're the troublemaker. Maybe you can hope you are used as a warning to the NHS when you die (https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/may/27/rise-in-coroner-warnings-nhs-patient-deaths-tory-austerity-labour), but y'know, that's not much comfort.

Sounds like hysteria, and heres why: A doctor potentially ending their high paid, lucrative career just to suggest euthanasia to vulnerable people is the stretch, its not realistic.

They problem is as you describe, they don't care about you, they wont offer the real support any more then they would offer the most visible and highly scrutinised option.
My experience is and has always been: doctors will offer you the easiest option FOR THEM, the golden rule of medicine is not "first do no  harm" it is "first, cover your ass"

And as I said in that very post, my experience is that "plenty of doctors will break the law because they know you can't do shit". I'm not alone, either, I know lots of people have stories like this. Very common amongst disabled AFAB people, because, funny enough, doctors think they're being "hysterical". And medical racism is so common that they have quantified the average amount that doctors undermedicate Black patients for pain. Almost never are there consequences for any of this. One of the more gruesome cases is that of Tyra Hunter. The ER staff who mocked her while she died in front of them were never even disciplined. And this one was, in part, transphobia, so it's real close to home for me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Tyra_Hunter

Is it hysteria if it's already happening? In fact, evidence suggests that it happens all the goddamn time, just like cops shooting Black people in the street and walking free.

Ok yes, there is a big difference between American medicine, and other counties. Elsewhere Doctors are routinely struck off or can't get insured due to complaints or law suits that drove up their premium.
This has has a cooling effect where doctors do the minimum and often miss out on real issues as they won't do anything more invasive than an xray for fear it puts them out of the job, basically a patient needs to demand things like CTs ect off their own bat

I can't speak to Canada, which was the original subject, but it's not a uniquely American problem at all. UK healthcare has replicated the exact same problems as regards racism and transphobia in a big way. I haven't investigated every medical system in the world, obviously, but my impression is that this is near enough universal. By its nature medical care puts people in a position of authority, where those people are bigots they will exercise that power, and systems of accountability tend not to work great when you are dealing with marginalised people as a general rule.

I'm honestly a little surprised the general consensus here seems to have so much faith in these systems of accountability - there's absolutely nothing about my experiences with any of these systems which makes me think they are working well. It's possible I'm predisposed to see the worst, but equally you guys seem to think that when you make complaints they will be listened to and acted upon. That has not been my experience whatsoever.

Generally making complaints to authority has led to me having more problems, not fewer.

As I said, a lot of it is about direction of travel.

It is possible that I'm being paranoid.

But the past few years have reinforced over and over again that I ought to expect the worst. May well be causing a bias in my view and making me too sensitive. From this article https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/18/canada-medically-assisted-death-delay it looks like the mental illness criteria has been delayed (though I can't see where it has been delayed to and I can't find another source but the Guardian) so that's positive. But my instinct is still to listen to the disability advocates who are saying "Look, they put us in situations where we can't afford care and life becomes torture and then they tell us we can choose death". Because that seems like exactly the sort of thing states are incentivised to do; we do similar things here in the UK all the time, the difference is that in the UK I'm lucky enough to have a support network which means I'm unlikely to wind up in that position myself. I still wouldn't move to the UK from outside it, especially without a support network here already.

Circling back to the original point, though, after today's meetup it looks like friends are looking at Ireland, Netherlands, Finland and Scotland (though... I think Scotland is optimistic personally). But they've got preexisting links to those places that make it easier to get out there. I got nothing, so if I am going to just run away, I ought to at least try and pick the best possible place. Wherever the hell that might be. I need to do a lot more research on that question.

(Technically I could probably work towards relocating to Scotland via work - but I'm really not as sold that Scotland would be significantly better if things progress in the way I expect)

Nobody that I've spoken to is planning to stick around, though. So if I do stay I also need more new friends or I'm going to be very lonely in a couple of years.

Yeah, I mean the bit quoted ITT seems plainly easy to justify it in a case where a condition would be exacerbated by poverty to me?

I don't know about Global News to be fair, but I don't think the bias outweighs the quotes from advocates. Even if we assume the people interviewed are lying, and there's a lot of them beyond those two articles, disability advocate groups do seem fairly united in their criticism from what I can see?

It's mostly the people I know out there who raised this to me. Mental illness comes in from March I believe and there's a couple good rundowns of the poverty factors here:

https://globalnews.ca/news/9176485/poverty-canadians-disabilities-medically-assisted-death/

https://www.thedailybeast.com/canadas-health-care-woes-are-pushing-people-with-disabilities-toward-medically-assisted-death

It's not being weaponised against trans people specifically yet, but there's a lot of disabled advocates speaking up on it. It'd only effect me at the point I couldn't look after myself... But that also happens to be the point where I'd be out of other options.