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August 1, 2024

trammels

trammels

a hindrance or impediment to free action; restraint

A clown in the middle of a ring as a group of darkly dressed observers look on from above. It appears to be a charcoal, or perhaps pencil, drawing.

One of the most important people in my life died years before her time. She knew something was wrong, something different than her usual ailments, but those pleas were disregarded. Far too many women suffering with chronic conditions experience the same. Told by doctors that it couldn’t be as described. That wouldn’t be tolerable.

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We don’t like to admit it, but the treatment available to us has more to do with privilege than science. Unless you can pay your way around it, the medical establishment demands performance above all else. The good sir doctor can’t just take you at your word. He must be convinced. Demonstrate any doubt in his authority, and your chart gets a label poisoning every future interaction.

Medicine isn’t the only domain where you’ll encounter this sort of bureaucratic kayfabe. The majority of these support systems are more performative than practical. Pennies get thrown at your feet if you jump through enough hoops, but a dance is expected in return. Can’t keep up? You’re deemed faulty. Insufficient, and in the pandemic age, expendable.

These institutions claim they foster independence, but that’s exactly what they steal. They exist to coerce people into sticking to a script. Taking deviations from “the norm”, and encouraging compliance through stage directions.

When you’ve been miscast, sometimes the only way to save the show is to break character.

ContextFall

The Signs that Defined the Apartheid by Africa Media Online

Force multipliers: How the criminal legal and child welfare systems cooperate to punish families by Emma Ruth

Prologue – or, the Carny Incarcerated by Chloe La Vada

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