#access friction

[smokey-eyes-and-bright-ties]

Idk if I’m just in a really sensitive place but two themes I’m noticing a lot lately are irking my soul. 1. Black people being asked to have “class solidarity” with bigots that actively want to kill us, and 2. covid conscious people being shamed for prioritizing their right to fucking live over being in solidarity with groups who won’t put on a fucking mask.

It’s the same thing actually. It’s marginalized people being asked to take the brunt of what these shitty solidarity movements look like today. It’s like people can’t imagine someone always being on the bottom and so their politics aren’t much different from the oppressive forces they’re supposedly fighting against.

This does not look good for the future of solidarity amongst different marginalizations. It is the constant sticking point that will continue to keep these so called social justice organizations spinning their wheels as oppression continues to dominant and control. We actually do need to get down into the nitty fucking gritty of having a critical lens for power, power imbalances within marginalized relationships, and how we replicate the fucking oppressive systems by expecting people to harm themselves, not for liberation, but for power building that’s supposedly going to lead to liberation.

We are not going to get free if we can’t have these uncomfortable and vulnerable conversations and really work through them. We will just continue to wonder why we don’t have enough people to take on the system while continuing to alienate and push people out of the movement.

[basil-lemonade]

serious access friction today because im here in the "ada section" at this Thing and can't easily relocate because it's crowded and i need to see the terps but the wind is blowing an entire FACEFUL of fur into my face and eyes from the service dog of the individual beside me. there's not really any way for either of us to move due to the smallness of this reserved section. the dog is soooooo cute though. so it goes.

[neuroscotian]

Being a masking crip killjoy

Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril and Daniel P Jones respond to a recent Polyphony essay exploring the access difficulties of wearing face-masks. Intr

In response to Phillips and Soorenian’s recent contribution to the Polyphony, we wish to highlight that wearing a face mask is not the norm in 2025, opposing their call for ‘normalising not wearing face masks and taking other measures’ in various disability events. We instead argue that all efforts to work through ‘access friction’ (conflicting access requirements) must be based on an accurate understanding of the broader situation at play: one in which mask wearing is highly stigmatised.

In the UK, there have been many political protests occurring in recent months, whether in response to proposed cuts to disability benefits or in opposition to the ongoing genocide in Gaza. At these protests, there is consistent stigmatisation of those who do mask, with the UK law (enacted under the 2022-2024 Sunak Conservative government) stating that ‘Police will be given power to arrest protestors who wear face coverings’ (Home Office, Cleverly, & Philp, 2024). Protesters who choose to wear masks might face arrest, up to a month in jail, and a £1,000 fine (Ibid). Additionally, in April 2021, there was a UK Government petition to ‘ban the use of face masks in schools’ when COVID-19 infection rates in the UK were at a significant peak (UK Government, 2021). In North Carolina, USA, on June 11th 2024 the General Assembly passed a bill that stated it is illegal to mask in public unless you have a contagious disease – implying that it is illegal to wear a face mask in a preventative manner (Stone, 2024). Evidently, masking is not considered the norm, neither in the UK nor elsewhere, including in our own workplace.

Public health messaging has been systemically politicised into claiming the COVID-19 pandemic is over. We argue that the logical jump from ‘masking is the societal norm’ to ‘this norm specifically stigmatises or others non-masking disabled people’ (Dorfman, 2024: 69), in the manner suggested by Phillips and Soorenian, is unsound and concerning. As masking crip killjoys, we hold together the dual realities that masks are an important, scientifically proven, part of a risk-mitigation protocol and that disabled people have an ambivalent relationship to masking. Phillips and Soorenian’s personal experiences are not at issue here. However, their claims regarding access frictions need to be handled with greater care given the existing discourse around masking. Here we extend conversations of access friction relating to masking beyond what we argue are damaging centrist frameworks that rely on personal discomfort and ‘questioning’ with little regard to broader political contexts and consequences.