Kat Gupta @mixosaurus.bsky.social

linguistics, feminism, LGB, queer and trans issues 🏳️‍🌈🦜🏳️‍⚧️ lecturer in political communication at Royal Holloway University of London

they/them

On the other hand, I love how good Meghalaya is for women. Women are valued in their own right and as necessary for inheritance. Baby girls are cherished as heirs. Women are educated, own businesses & walk the streets safely. This is not something that can be taken for granted in the rest of India
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On one hand, tourism helps preserve the land; Costa Rica is a superb example of how ecotourism makes forests more valuable as forests than as wood. Ecotourism pays and people need the money. The Seven Sisters are astonishingly biodiverse and the more protection that gets, the better.
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And there are tourist demands and expectations about food, culture, religion and gender. Khasi, Jaintia and Garo culture risks becoming commercialised and commodified as something quaint for the tourist gaze, rather than living and real.

I don't know how I feel about it.
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And when this comes into contact with mainland patriarchal Hinduism, strange things happen. There's a tourist industry of offering traditional clothes to dress up in, offering "traditional villages" to visit and eat in, offering tours to places that were previously quiet and known only to locals
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People are largely Christian (Catholic or Presbyterian) or follow indigenous religions. We eat distinct foods: neï iong, jadoh, tungrymbai, doh khleh, tungtap. We'll try to pickle anything. We wear jainkryshah and jainsem. We do not practice arranged marriages and the man moves into his wife's house
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Something that's changed a lot in Shillong is the sheer amount of tourism from the rest of India. The 7 Sisters have always been geographically, linguistically & culturally distinct. In Meghalaya, the Khasi, Jaintia & Garo tribes are matrilineal - property passes to Ka Khadduh, the youngest daughter
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Finally brought my wife to Meghalaya to meet the family, and I can't tell whether she's happier about the sheer variety of pork dishes on offer or that we show affection through brutally roasting each other.
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Finally made it - after a 28 hour journey - to my aunt's house in Shillong, Meghalaya. Now doing my marking on my phone's hotspot. Strange how technology collapses the distance and I am both very far away (geographically, culturally, linguistically) and close to the UK
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Reposted by Kat Gupta
saranahmed.bsky.social's profile picture
Feminist Killjoy @saranahmed.bsky.social
15d
Solidarity with the transgender & intersex communities in India after the Amendment Bill was bulldozed through houses of parliament replacing self-identification with mandatory medical certification. My #KilljoySolidarity with you in this fight. Friends, sign & fight!
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdKNOw0cQrMbkYm2srKIBa-RHBMHRVCz6jkY9W-l714oJy8MQ/viewform
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Long and intellectually stimulating day at the University of Birmingham discussing trans discourses, media and policy - thank you so much @drcharlottegalpin.bsky.social!
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Today I wrote a chunk of an article and wrote one blindingly good sentence. I don't know if that sentence will stay in or get edited out at some point, but it's nice to feel that I can write - and write well - after having a couple of knocks to my confidence
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Excellent and comprehensive summary of the perfect storm of genAI, the pressure to produce and publish public academic work, and the ailing system of academic publishing. We should be worried about this - more than we currently are
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On Sunday morning I'll be running a free makers workshop for @transunityquilt.bsky.social in Deptford - no experience required - we provide all the equipment, and as much caffeine as you need: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/trans-unity-quilt-makers-workshop-at-triangle-deptford-tickets-1984562525938 All trans people and friends welcome - please spread the word?
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New #OpenAccess article. This one has been in development for a while, so it is nice to finally see this research published.

'Paths to action: Fantasy, ideology and incitement in an extreme-right narrative'. Language in Society doi.org/10.1017/S0047404526102127
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Happy International Women’s Day! Please enjoy this article I wrote with Rosie Walters in 2024. We explore the IWD communications from arms manufacturers, arguing that these function as a form of gender washing (whereby discourses of progress obscure violence)

doi.org/10.1093/ips/olae021
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In a world where appalling acts of violence are committed every day, our climate teeters on the brink of collapse and where powerful men act with impunity, don't we have better things to do than make marginalised people fight for scraps of dignity?
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and it's wrong to think that Black people and disabled people are separate groups that have irreconcilable needs when Black disabled people are offering nuanced perspectives

I've linked to a transcript of Jhónelle Bean, a Black woman with Tourette syndrome:

bsky.app/profile/pygmywhales.bsky.social/post/3mfkksjm5vs2a
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But context matters. Being able to read the room matters. This interaction was stoked up and made to go viral - clipped from footage, stripped of context and engineered to cause outrage.

Two minoritised groups pit against each other and made to fight. That is what I find so incredibly disturbing.
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God knows I've been on the receiving end of racism, homophobia, transphobia. I know the words that are used to hurt me and I know their power - that caught-breath flinch and that split second decision of how to respond - aggression? defusion? ignore? - and all the ways that you cannot respond.
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The shitty thing about Tourette syndrome is that it makes you blurt out words that you know are offensive & hurtful. It's not an issue of education or lack of control - it's not something that can be controlled. And they should fully be in society, incl accepting awards for their achievements.
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People in the room were much better prepared to address the dynamics as they emerged. It was a huge error to have not edited the broadcast - as the organisers did to edit out "free Palestine" or Davidson's other tics - and so not create shitty internet outrage that hurts everyone.
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I've seen so many rancid takes on the BAFTAs that either seem to assume that disabled people shouldn't be out in public or seem to assume that Black people shouldn't be out in public.

I don't have a good answer to this but I do know the organisers chose not to bleep it out of the broadcast.
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Every year, two of my best friends and I line up our arms and compare how the endless murk of the British winter has done us dirty. No person should be these colours ☹️
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Sometimes academia is great because you get to nerd out about one of your special interests and take an entire class along with you. Anyway today I taught crisis communication and got to talk about some of my very favourite disasters and also introduce Sara Ahmed's writing on making a crisis
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@salonidesouza.bsky.social delighted to be your first follower 😊
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Sometimes you're having a kind of crappy week and then the guys at the campus falafel van remember you and give you extra falafel and that's how you end up with eleven (11) hot fresh falafel with your chips #blessed
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Meet Cheese. Today he hung out on this sofa for a solid four hours while a gaggle of adoring students cooed over every twitch of his whiskers and took an absurd number of photos of him.

Tough life being a @royalholloway.bsky.social campus cat
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The bits I get emotional about are a) all of Thomas Andrews' appearances and b) that final swoop along the A deck promenade along the sunken ship, where the lights begin to glow from the inside and the crumpled deck clears. A ship's dream of herself.
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I'm deeply interested in disaster documentaries which my wife hates, so today we compromised on Titanic (1997) and now, in the year of our Lord 2026, my wife is crying over Titanic
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The same Palantir that Keir Starmer's Labour have embedded in our NHS and Ministry of Defence.

The level of authoritarian surveillance and data gathering/selling already happening in the UK is deeply frightening.
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