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Dr Emma Sheppard

@emmas.bsky.social

830 followers 650 following 450 posts

Sociologist, Aberystwyth. Critical disability studies. Overthinking trauma, bodies, pain, time, sexuality, crip rage, queer joy. Knitter, sewist, reptile herder, forever exhausted. She/her. 🏳️‍🌈 Compost the rich. https://linktr.ee/dremmasheppard

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Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · Apr 24

Lads, I am very rubbish at posting here, but: I wrote a thing, and it is now out with Feminist Theory. doi.org/10.1177/1464... - it's called The Necessary Pleasures of the Crip Killjoy and it's about thinking with brain fog and discomfort and violence and joy in refusal.

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Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · Apr 29

Thank you for this! Seeing it broken down in a non-UK context too helps me wrap my head around how it's enacted. FWIW my issue is very specifically w a particular segment of my academic field who are either actively doing this, or pretending it isn't 'relevant' - the discourse has always been awful

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Reposted by Dr Emma Sheppard

Lia @liasae.bsky.social · Apr 29

So let’s break this down a touch more via the Swedish angle because it has been a thing for years (and I’ll admit it’s a bit annoying to see people notice it only now but hey better late than never I suppose).
The exact way this has gotten wielded is psychiatrists pondering statistics aloud

Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · Apr 28

Hey, disability studies people. We need to talk about this: www.thepinknews.com/2025/04/28/n... - because we know where it's come from, right? You know that research behind this has come from people in our field, right?

NHS 'to test trans young people for autism and ADHD'

Trans young people will allegedly be 'screened' for autism and ADHD according to planned NHS guidance on youth gender clinics.

www.thepinknews.com

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Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · Apr 28

Exactly - autism diagnosis will be another hurdle.

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Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · Apr 28

DM me the best email to reach you on?

Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · Apr 28

Right, fuck it. If you want to help write some sort of open letter or an article, do the DM slide.

I have continual brain soup and if you've got an idea please say. If you don't have an idea but want to help also say.

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Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · Apr 28

Do let me know what you think!

Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · Apr 28

I'm thinking this, along with some sort of ... template for the public consultation aspect, whenever that comes through. I'm not entirely sure where a letter would go tbh - maybe something aimed at MPs individually might be better. Or an article somewhere rather than a letter.

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Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · Apr 28

I know that I'm yelling about this to people who are going to largely agree with me. That's the point. We - the disability studies people who know exactly why this is bad - need to get our collective shit together. This is our are we the baddies moment.

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Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · Apr 28

Or: you can't get care because you're autistic and therefore can't understand what trans is.

That's it. That's how it will be used.

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Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · Apr 28

You know how this will be used,right? Either you can't get on the wait list for gender-affirming medical care until you've been cleared for autism (but no funding to shorten those adult autism diagnosis wait lists!), good luck with adding a couple of extra years to that waiting time of several years

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Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · Apr 28

We - as a field - need to speak up. I know everything is on fucking fire right now. But this is something we actually have expertise in. We have ground to stand on here.

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Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · Apr 28

This can absolutely fuck off into the sun for a host of reasons, not least because it comes from the position that being trans is *bad* (and this gets backed up by the position that being autistic is bad too, it doesn't matter which way you come at it). This isn't a fucking neutral position any more

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Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · Apr 28

NHS 'to test trans young people for autism and ADHD'

Trans young people will allegedly be 'screened' for autism and ADHD according to planned NHS guidance on youth gender clinics.

www.thepinknews.com

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Reposted by Dr Emma Sheppard

Arthur Webber 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈 @bernietranders.bsky.social · Apr 28

Genuinely if I had been outflanked on the left by Tim Martin and Wetherspoons and I considered myself to be a left wing politician, I would resign and spend the rest of my career in a cave reflecting on how I let my brain get so rotted by columnists about who shits where

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Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · Apr 25

Pretty much. Or maybe: crip which is only known/understood through being crip.

Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · Apr 25

I have still not decided if I like the blurring enough for a new portmanteau

Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · Apr 25

Ontology is what we know (eg water is wet) and epistemology is the how we know it (eg empirical observation) - or ways of knowing. So cripistemology is crip ways of knowing. Crip-isto-ontology is a sort of ... crips know crip through doing/being crip

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Dr Emma Sheppard @emmas.bsky.social · Apr 25

💯💯💯

Reposted by Dr Emma Sheppard

San Alland (they/San) @san-alland.bsky.social · Apr 25

Crip guests in my essay echo @emmas.bsky.social's "There is joy in the ashes of the future-not-to-be, there is pleasure in their discomfort with our joy and our rejection."

Also online as a BSL video, with captions & audio description - and an embodied Footnote played by Deaf actor Ciaran Stewart.