Freakonomics has a lot to answer for.

🧵 p9 and p.s.

if anyone comes at you implying that this is advice on how to 'work the system' - remind them that the rate of disability fraud, by the government's most recent measuring in Feb 2025, is 0.2%.

🧵 p8
Please see my other pinned post on PIP tips.

Pace yourself. Do it in stages. Get help to do it.

And do something life affirming along the way.

You matter, we matter, our lives are important.

We are so much bigger than their bureaucracy.

🧵 p7 The timeframe is v important to mention if your condition causes cumulative consequences, like increased dizziness, pain spikes, post-exertional malaise etc, as it helps to illustrate the additional impact and the recovery you must do afterwards.

CRUCIAL for 'invisible' disabilities.

🧵 p6 So for example:

"I can't prepare a meal every day on the cooker because [the debilitating exhaustion and brain fog] caused by my [ME/CFS] makes me [fumble the knife and cut myself, and burn food on the cooker.] I am able to safely cook a meal [once per week]."

🧵 p5 What. Why. How. When.

They are less likely to recognise your disability if you don't explain each of these four elements.

🧵p4 You can use this template for each question:

"I can't do/need help to do (activity) due to the [specific symptoms/impairment] caused by my [condition, diagnosis, injury etc] which makes me [consequence]. This happens [timeframe]

🧵p3 The questions asked on the PIP form are not totally clear, and your answers need to give more info than the questions are asking for.

Your answers need to explain what, why, how and when. For every question.

🧵p2 Text across six purple paint-sploshed slides reads as follows:

PIP* tip #2: a simple format for answering difficult questions

*Personal Independence Payment - a UK disability benefit that's not tied to work or income

that's such a good tip. We've got such an increased burden when it comes to documenting an illness that's not only invisible (if you don't know what to look for) but also still not fully even believed by a shocking number of medics.

The hilarious audacity of Hadley Freeman refering to 'the trans witch-hunt' as if she's not one of the witch hunters.

Just keep all your letters, print the medical records bit from Patient Access if you use it (it's a summary of your NHS record basically) and don't try to do too much of it all at once. It's designed to crush us, but we know how to pace.

You are so welcome - I'm so glad it's useful. 💚

pt 4 🧵 It's clear to me that privileged white women have repurposed the old 'white women as damsels in distress' batsignal that was leveraged so violently against Black men in the past (and present) and it will be Black trans women who bear the worst harm from this.

pt3 🧵 *I made this sign for the 1st of many demos to come following the UK Supreme Court ruling that women are defined by the appearance of their external genitalia at birth; so, vagina = woman, which puts this ideology in line with misogynists - an irony that seems lost on the gender criticals.

p2 🧵...part of the billions of intricately expressive forms of life that that make this place the gorgeous ecology that it is. Don't ever let them convince you otherwise.

Our place is everywhere.