Gray Black (they/any)

Few aspects of my PhD have given me as much joy as connecting and giggling with my research participants.

For any queer persons whose identities playfully / spiritually entangle with the non-human animal, check out the participation link! #furry #alterhuman #posthumanism #queerecology

grayblack.uk

The Psychic Lives of Statues - Pluto Press An exploration of global statue controversies and cultural memory

Reminding us that art includes non-fiction composition is ‘The Psychic Lives of Statues’, an Odyssean read which skilfully stories the colonial politics of moulded memorials. This text by @rahulraothariel.bsky.social will segue into next week’s #PoliticalArtSpotlight, so stay tuned!

Will be thinking about her all day

Close your eyes. Recall the joy, hope, & resolution you felt in the moments you realised the ethos of socioeconomic fairness and kindness won.

How will you bring that spirit to all those who feel hopeless? How will you consistently show up for the reality of community you felt on Nov 5th, 2025? 💓

It can’t be a mere coincidence that an anagram of Richard Cheney is “herd chicanery”

Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence NATIONAL SECURITY PRESIDENTIAL MEMORANDUM/NSPM-7 MEMORANDUM FOR THE SECRETARY OF STATE                THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY THE ATTORNEY GENERAL

McCarthyism really do be poppin’. Thinking about James C Scott’s “anarchist calisthenics” today.

I understand that no one’s required to enjoy every kind of care to nevertheless offer it, but it still seems like empathic occlusion to me.

I’ve been finding it a bit jarring meeting humans who opt not for considering care in the context of others’ benefit, but rather, only what they would want to give.

Ex: How could one’s hatred of brewing tea be totally unmoved by the pleasure of the loved one who’s requested it?

Edinburgh becomes first city in Scotland to boycott Israel Edinburgh has become the first city in Scotland to boycott Israel.

Honestly surprised it wasn’t Glasgow, but this at least a start. The least we can do is to boycott genoc*de. Have you looked up the BDS list yet? 💚

Nothing to ask other than if there is anything I/we can do to support! :)

Research Participation If you are a queer-identifying alter-human and/or furry who is interested in being a part of my current research project, please visit the Participant Interest Form to get started. I look forward t…

Calling all queer furries, alter-humans, and creatures!

If interested in taking part in a doctoral thesis (and subsequent book) on the eco-politics of multi- and trans-species entanglements, please take a peek at the participant info form and consider joining in. Your tale is worth it 🦎💚

Queering Proportionality: The Impact of Trans Allyship on Palestinian Liberation The transgender refusal to devalue the lives of those who have been taught to hate them due to personal, religious, or political prejudice is a flame we must stoke.

Queerness as political philosophy—a politics of pro-social possibility amidst difference—is the loudhailer for anti-imperialism and anti-hierarchy. We therefore must continue to reflect on how queerphobia from within different liberation movements erodes the ground upon which those movements move.

I’ve been (re)teaching myself a bit of Scots Gaelic and have been playing around with it a bit. Last night’s discovery was that Gaelic pronounced in Valleyspeak sounds eerily like Simlish. Mentally replacing the Lion Rampart with a green plumbob.

something no one warns you about before beginning queer socio-political research is the merciless autocorrecting of “cishet” to “cashew"

Hey Pi!! I’ll ask the organisers, but I can also send you the script too :)

Last week, I took a Chaucerian pilgrimage to Canterbury. I chose to share a story on interspecific entanglements and how they not only mediate queer theory & ecocriticism but ally prefigurative politics & speculative fabulation. Thanks rethinkingfable.bsky.social for hosting such a fabulous event!

You do not need Indigenous, Immigrant, Queer or Other-than-human persons to live in physical proximity to you to call them “neighbour”, for they are *you* in the eyes of those who subjugate and steamroll literally anyone for capital and control.

Given the recent news on Labour’s scapegoating of immigrants, Israeli airstrikes on Palestinian hospitals, and Trump’s surveillance partnerships between Palantir and ICE, this is the time to redefine “neighbour” in terms or proximity to political agency.

Things change, and we must adapt to those changes. At an institution known for its direct intellectual & monetary investment in international relations, what better time to renegotiate the very concept of leadership so that it denounces war crimes and the flouting of international humanitarian law?

You do not share in this era if you think the Rector should perform as Baronet Anstruther or Andrew Carnegie. You're not in this decade if ignoring the precedent for an activistic Rector since Popovic. You're not in 2025 if claiming that only a few should use their power to decry top-down violence.

Today, there is no single, static way to be a Rector, reflecting a fact of history, and of existence: Concepts and their subsequent material realities change to meet the needs of their cultural and temporal context.

An academic “Rector” as a position is first and foremost a concept. The etymological home to which this concept returns remains the same (“to lead”), and yet the architecture & trappings of that home have changed drastically over the 400+ years of its existence within universities across the globe.

Rather, I have been most unsettled by the misconception "what is must always have been", for this rationale belies truly uncritical ontologies and dangerous assumptions about concepts themselves.

As we’ve watched Stella Maris navigate this year-long defamation, it hasn’t been the normative claim “what has been must continue to be” that has troubled me most. Sadly, this rhetoric is to be expected from at least some humans; many grow accustomed to their chains while others cozy up on thrones.

Luckily, we have three powerful skills already at our disposal!
1. Offering aid, love, affirmation, safety to queer/trans kin
2. Engaging directly with queerphobia about where folks have been self-abnegating and how queerness liberates.
3. Causing a ruckus (*cough, cough*)

But it also further legitimises anti-queer (and anti-autonomy) discourse on the global stage whilst peddling a lifeless "science" indifferent to the deeply complex bio-social realities of our miraculous planet.

This ruling carries obvious domestic costs (e.g., scapegoating trans people and the stoking of tensions with the NHS and other public services, further accommodating the neolib private).

Oh-so cringey how these twits (UK Supreme Court) will capitulate to / feel emboldened by trends within the US. It begs of us independent inquiry: "Where in our lives are we being ruled by fear? What is its actual root?"

The neoimperial logic is clear: The Subaltern (human and other-than-human) are as much political agent as they are levied commodity. We laugh at the absurdity, but this is a performance of grandstanding and political molestation at the expense of one of the last “untouched” biotical sanctuaries.