Derry Girls | Beyond Paradise | Whatever else currently floats my boat
Amateur Writer | Amateur Bookbinder | Professional Worrier
Mike | 40 | He/Him | England
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Myth: "I only wear vegan fabrics. Better for the animals, better for the planet."
Let's check in on Doris's annual contribution.
Once a year, in late spring, Doris is sheared. The procedure takes approximately three minutes. Doris does not enjoy it. Doris does not, by any visible measure, suffer from it. Doris is, immediately afterwards, a noticeably more comfortable animal in the British summer.
The fleece weighs approximately 3 kilograms. It is sold to the British Wool Marketing Board for, depending on the year, between £0.40 and £2.50 per kilogram. The shearing costs more than the wool fetches. Brian is shearing Doris at a loss.
The wool is then:
- Naturally flame-retardant
- Naturally antibacterial
- Moisture-wicking
- Biodegradable
- Renewable, annually
- Carbon-storing while in use
The replacement, in performance fabrics:
- Polyester
- Polyamide
- Acrylic
- Polypropylene
- All petroleum-derived
- All shedding microplastics on every wash
- All requiring fossil fuel inputs to produce
- All non-biodegradable, with a typical landfill lifespan of 200-500 years
A single wash of a polyester fleece can release up to 700,000 microplastic fibres into the water system. These fibres are now in: every tested water source on earth, every tested human placenta, every tested rainfall sample, the deep ocean, the Arctic ice, and the lungs of marine mammals.
A single wash of a wool jumper releases: nothing. The wool, when eventually disposed of, returns to soil within a few years.
The fabric being marketed as the "ethical" alternative to wool is plastic.
The plastic is "ethical" because nobody has been asked to slaughter the polymer.
The polymer also has not been asked.
Doris, by being a sheep on a fell, is producing the most thoroughly sustainable performance fabric humans have ever made.
Brian is selling it at a loss.
The fashion industry, meanwhile, is selling petroleum at a profit and calling it ethical.
Reject plastic. Wear wool.
Doris is, this morning, growing next year's batch.
Note: if you're allergic to wool, you might be allergic to the dyes and fine with undyed wool. Maybe not, but it's worth a try.
do you guys remember when it came out that there was targeted sexual abuse & forced labor of transmasc & other queer perceived-female people at an ICE facility, and like it was very specifically "transmascs getting both sexually harassed, told to wear makeup, actively assaulted to make them act more feminine, while also being forced to do grueling manual labor & being directly told this was a result of them "wanting to be a man""? do you remember when that came out and then it was crickets from the community it feels like.
And now we have the community panicking about “ICE targeting trans people” and it’s like… they already did, you just didn’t care when it was happening to trans men of colour.
At the South Louisiana Ice Processing Center in Basile, detainees say they were forced into hard labor – and sexually assaulted and stalked
“I was treated worse than an animal,” said Mario Garcia-Valenzuela, one of the detainees. “We don’t deserve to be treated like this.”
Garcia-Valenzuela, a trans man detained at SLIPC, has alleged that, as part of the unsanctioned work program, [assistant warden] Reyes forced him to move heavy cabinets and cinder blocks, and to clean using industrial-strength chemicals without gloves or protective gear. When Garcia-Valenzuela complained of injuries from the work program, he said, Reyes and his associates forcefully stripped him naked and mocked him.
Kenia Campos-Flores, who is trans and non-binary, told the Guardian that they suffered from persistent migraines and chest pain after exposure to cleaning chemicals they were made to use during unofficial, overnight work shifts. Campos-Flores also alleged in a complaint they were persistently sexually harassed by Reyes, who entered their dorm and stole possessions including their boxers.
Another trans detainee, Monica Renteria-Gonzalez, complained that a stripper chemical he was told to use to clean the facility floors seeped through his fabric shoes and burned the skin of his feet. On more than one occasion, while Renteria-Gonzalez was bent over cleaning, he said, Reyes came up from behind and inappropriately touched him. The assistant warden also told Renteria-Gonzalez he was watching the detainee through security cameras, including while he was showering.
A fourth detainee, identified by the pseudonym Jane Doe, is a cisgender, queer woman who said that Reyes forced her to perform oral sex on him on a “near daily basis” between February and May 2024, threatening to kill her if she refused, according to her complaint.
Doe, who was deported to the Dominican Republic in January this year, has chosen not to share her name or speak publicly because she fears that Reyes will make good on his threat to find and harm her, her lawyer said. [...]
“This was a sadistic late-night work program,” said Sarah Decker, a senior staff attorney with RFK Human Rights. “It was designed to target vulnerable trans men or masculine-presenting LGBTQ people, who [Reyes] coerced into participating.”
A cis woman was also involved in the sexual violence:
Twice, Renteria-Gonzalez said, Reyes came up behind him and touched him inappropriately. Another SLIPC officer, according to Renteria-Gonzalez, began to sexually harass him as well, sending him explicit notes and showing him pornographic images of herself.
This article includes more from each victim, but I want to highlight this part as well:
Garcia-Valenzuela had fled to the US in 2014 from Mexico, where he was tortured by members of a drug cartel. “I have no choice, that’s why I’m fighting,” he said. “Because I know that as soon as they deport me, I’m going to be handed over to the cartels and I’m going to be tortured and killed – ripped into pieces.”
But in SLIPC he faced a new kind of horror. He alleged that on more than one occasion he was told to move heavy metal filing cabinets back and forth across a room. When he struggled to lift the furniture, Reyes would taunt him, he said, saying: “If you think you are a man, I’m going to treat you like a man.”
In the spring of 2024, Garcia-Valenzuela reported sexual harassment on the basis of his gender, in accordance with Prea. He said he felt targeted due to his gender identity and wanted the fact he is transgender removed from his file, as a measure of protection. But an [ICE] officer responded that “even if we take off your transgender marker, there is no hiding that you are transgender”, noting Garcia-Valenzuela’s physical appearance, he said. To Garcia-Valenzuela’s knowledge, no follow-up investigation into Reyes was conducted.
Renteria-Gonzalez’s complaints were dismissed as well, Renteria-Gonzalez said.
To repeat what was said above: we have the community panicking about “ICE targeting trans people” and it’s like… they already did, you just didn’t care when it was happening to trans men (and nonbinary people and queer women) of colour.