Robert Chapman

I really recommend Empire of Normality by @drrobertchapman.bsky.social, esp in view of the current UK ed crisis which is having an oppressive impact on children & families from the #SEND side of the tracks www.plutobooks.com/978074534866...

It seems the fascists outnumbered the antifascists in both Newcastle and Manchester yesterday. The streets are only ours so long as we have the numbers to keep them. So much rests on that.

Among all the weird takes that seem to be popular online, the one that always gets me is that studying STEM somehow morally corrupts people and the solution is to make people additionally go through a humanities and/or social science curriculum at the university level.

This is good and also a lot of cis people will sympathise more with the smashed windows than with the dead trans people.

(PDF) Mad Pride in Revolutionary England: The Ranters as Mad Activism PDF | Collective mental health patient organising in England is usually dated to the nineteenth century and seen as arising in response to the mass... | Find, read and cite all the research you need o...

I've uploaded a free preprint for a forthcoming article, Mad Pride in Revolutionary England: The Ranters as Mad Actvism. It will be published in History Workshop Journal next year. I'm proud of this and see it as the start of a new, much bigger project.
www.researchgate.net/publication/...

But the ranters also used their own terms, e.g. they called each other "fellow creature", so this was part of their far less acceptable politics too.

An overlooked harm of the prominence of gender critical transphobia is that transphobes who don't hold gender critical metaphysics now find it easier to pass unnoticed. This includes those engaged in transphobia for opportunistic reasons, those who just enjoy dominance over trans people, and others.

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

NEW PAPER (ish - I'm also just delayed) journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
Using Q Methodology, a Group of Neurodivergent Neurodiversity Researchers Ask: What is the Neurodiversity Movement and what should it do?

This back and forth between the ideology of establishment psychiatry in defense of a failed, distrusted status quo and fascist anti-psychiatry seeking to destroy public care services is not doing what its ostensibly progressive advocates think it’s doing. We must reset the terms, not parrot them.

We are now in a situation in the UK where even the conservative papers and politicians are saying that the genocide needs to end yet they seem to have collectively forgotten that asking nicely and appealing to the moral conscience of those in power is categorically not how social change happens.

The Labour Party should disband to avoid splitting the left vote at the next election.

Trump order pushes forcible hospitalization of homeless people Trump executive order would increase hospitalization of homeless individuals with mental health and substance use disorders. The order said shifting homeless people into long-term institutional settin...

www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/...

Not going to say any more now as I'm currently unwell but just wanted to make it available for anyone interested.

(PDF) Mad Pride in Revolutionary England: The Ranters as Mad Activism PDF | Collective mental health patient organising in England is usually dated to the nineteenth century and seen as arising in response to the mass... | Find, read and cite all the research you need o...

I've uploaded a free preprint for a forthcoming article, Mad Pride in Revolutionary England: The Ranters as Mad Actvism. It will be published in History Workshop Journal next year. I'm proud of this and see it as the start of a new, much bigger project.
www.researchgate.net/publication/...

Health Communism is finally out in paperback on 7/29! If you’re planning to order a copy online, please get it from the @workshops4gaza.bsky.social bookstore & add an additional donation to Sameer Project if you can! 👇

This is very wholesome and good

You essentially have a white leadership repeatedly suspending one of their very few Black MPs for talking about and defining racism in ways they disagree with.

The ways the Labour Party leadership treats Dianne Abbott is appalling. I hope she leaves and joins the new left party.

I'm surprised nobody has published a critical book detailing and critically analysing the Make America Healthy Again movement.

I think the ease with which the Trump administration has wiped out almost every gain for the disability community in the past decade suggests that the strategy of primarily working through executive orders and federal rule making may just have been a sand castle in terms of progress.

Yes, it really is possible for everyone to be neurodivergent In recent years a lot more people have been identifying as neurodivergent.

Still thinking about this one. From @drrobertchapman.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/neurodiv...

Dialogues on Disability: Shelley Tremain Interviews Raymond Aldred Hello, I’m Shelley Tremain and I would like to welcome you to the one hundred and twenty-fourth installment of Dialogues on Disability, the series of interviews that I am conducting with disabled p…

My interview with the wonderful Indigenous disabled philosopher, Raymond Aldred!

image below: close-up photo of Ray who has a mustache and goatee, is wearing a jean jacket and hat, and looking directly into the lens of the shot.

biopoliticalphilosophy.com/2025/07/16/d...

Police unveil calming mural to support neurodiverse detainees - BBC News A new mural at Gloucestershire Constabulary’s custody suite is designed for neurodiverse detainees.

A nice example of how reformist neurodiversity so often ends up repackaging the same old forms of oppression with slightly different aesthetics. This is happening in education, work, etc. too.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

"Mad Youth Organise are holding an online call at 7pm on Wednesday 23rd July, where we’ll be reflecting on months of collective action against the cruel welfare reform bill, and introducing the next steps for the Mad Youth Organise campaign and how you can get involved.

I think any kind of AI apocalypse in the near future would, if it happened, be far less about machines taking over and far more about mass unemployment caused by AI paving the way for fascists to take over.

'He was a violent socialist': How Superman started out as a radical rebel Returning to cinemas next week, the superhero may be known as the ultimate all-American Mr Nice Guy – but, back in the 1930s, he didn't begin that way.

Fwiw, I recently read that the earliest Superman was also originally a militant socialist.
www.bbc.com/culture/arti...

"Normal is not a fact; it is a construct, a story we tell ourselves about who belongs and who does not." This striking line from Robert Chapman’s Empire of Normality captures the essence of a book that challenges everything we think we know about what it means to be "normal." As someone who has often felt like an outsider, this book felt like a revelation—a deeply thoughtful exploration of how societal norms are created, enforced, and resisted. Chapman’s work is not just an academic critique; it’s a call to rethink the ways we define and value human difference.

Weird new (AI?) problem for me: accounts posting reviews of my book centred around totally made up quotes that I've not said in the book or anywhere else.

Fascist Yoga - Stewart Home — Art & Talking Chipping Norton Presenting Fascist Yoga at Art & Talking, Stewart Home sweeps away the half-truths to tell a new origin story of the world's first modern yogi – a Californian escapologist who added some Hindu fairy…

⚡️TODAY⚡️

@stewarthome.bsky.social presents Fascist Yoga, his brand new book, which will be available to buy!

🗓️Sat, July 12
⏰7 pm
📍Art and Talking
www.artandtalking.com/fascistyoga

Seeking bulldozer drivers to demolish Gaza: how a genocide is being outsourced | Arwa Mahdawi The systematic destruction of Gaza is hardly a secret. Now, the IDF is posting Facebook ads for bulldozer operators to help demolish the strip

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Sullivan makes recommendations that prima facie violate UK privacy laws, inevitably put universities at risk of being referred to Prevent for gross negligence, abandon basic EDI policies for no discernible public benefit, and undermine the role of university ethics committees