Summary

Frigga and Jens talk with Debbie about Digital Accessibility. About the importance of social media for strategically undervalued people and a lot else.

00:00:09
Jens: Welcome to the Wyrd Thing podcast, episode 33 about digital accessibility. I’m your host Jens .My co-host today is Frigga.

00:00:17
Frigga: Hi, hi.

00:00:19
Jens: And our special guest for this topic today is Debbie.

00:00:23
Debbie: Hi.

00:00:25
Jens: Hi, Debbie. Good to have you here. Before we dive into the topic. Could you please tell us a little bit about yourself?

00:00:32
Debbie: Yeah, I’m Debbie Gregory, I’m a MA student at the University of Leeds studying English literature. I’ve been an advocate in accessibility in the pagan community for a little over a decade now. My main focus has been on raising awareness and educating on the lived experiences of disabled pagans, the carers, their families and how that impacts pagan practices and in creating safe online spaces for those who, particularly for those who online spaces, are their only access to the community. That’s, I guess, the important parts of me relevant to this.

00:01:07
Jens: Oh, well, I think you could tell us a little bit more about what you’re doing in Heathenry in general as well.

00:01:12
Debbie: So I am one of the neurodivergent representatives of Asatru UK, where I work with a great community support team, sort of making sure that AUK is as accessible as it can be and as inclusive as it can be. I ensure that AUK works quite closely with the growth of Alethea, which is my organisation that is specifically for neurodivergent and disabled pagans. Again, we do education, advocacy, peer support, things like that. I don’t have to do very much with AUK and within Heathenry because they’re already so inclusive anyway, that it’s mostly when something complex comes up and they want my advice on on how to manage complex. Sometimes there are people’s needs that very much butt heads and it can be difficult to meet so many diverse needs that can be. There are very much people who think that their needs should come before other people’s needs, and I’m not about that. So I’m usually the one that’s called in to deal with issues where they can’t really see how to accommodate two opposing needs at once, because I’m quite good at making sure that that can get done, and compromising, finding a compromise where you can actually meet all needs at once. So yeah, that’s that’s generally what I do.

00:02:24
Jens: Why is it the growth of Alethea?

00:02:27
Debbie: Alethea is a Greek deity who was initially considered to be a Greek version of the Roman veritas, a god of truth, um. However, more recently scholars believe that it is in fact that she is the goddess of Unconcealedness, unmasking of truth. And as we deal with accessibility for disabled and neurodivergent people who are still a minoritized, strategically undervalued group across the entire world who is spoken at and spoken over more than we are listened to with our own voices, in our own communication. So. Alethea was considered to be the best representation of what it was that we were trying to do. Her symbols are a mirror and a seed and a veil. So these things together, they’ve got connotations across many different paths that that highlight that, you know, our voices mean something, and it’s time to stop allowing them to be spoken over, so to speak, including the non-verbal communication. I have to make that very, very clear.

00:03:35
Jens: Okay. Thank you. Digital accessibility has a lot of aspects. And before we tackle the slightly bigger one, I think it might be an easy access to speak just a little bit about the old fashioned websites and what we should be aware to get them as accessible as possible.

00:03:57
Debbie: Yeah. Unfortunately, unless you pay a lot for your websites or you pay somebody who’s got a lot of skills or you have a lot of skills yourself, um, it can be quite daunting to make websites accessible. And I hear a lot from people, you know, I don’t know how to do that. And I don’t have the skills to do this. I don’t have the money to do that. But there are some really simple things that can be done to make them as accessible as possible. Uh, one is to attempt to use a dyslexia friendly font in your writing. And a good way to test for this is if you look at the A in the font. If the A is a proper circle with a line A that tends to be dyslexia friendly. If it’s the one, I can’t remember the name of it where it sort of got a squiggle up and then a squiggle down, and if it’s that one, it tends to not be dyslexia friendly. That’s not a completely like 100% rule. Some of them are still wrong, but if you don’t have the money to pay for, sometimes the fonts are copyrighted. So if you if you don’t have the money to pay for one, just a rule of thumb is if it has, the easier a I call it, then it’s likely to be more dyslexia friendly.

00:05:02
Jens: If I understand you correctly, that means choose the plain simple font. Not not the much decorated ones with all these serif things. And these, uh, make it nice here and make a nice there. And oh, I can put another hook to the letter on this edge as well.

00:05:18
Debbie: A good thing to remember is that many dyslexic people and there are several kinds of dyslexia. People aren’t always aware of that, but there are several kinds of dyslexia. You can have cognitive dyslexia, which is brain to eye function. There’s visual dyslexia, which is eye to brain, and there’s a combination of the two, which is wild and wacky and jumps between the two depending on what your brain is doing that day. And it’s incredibly complex to get both diagnosed. A lot of places do not recognize, a lot of countries do not recognize that there is more than one kind, but each one works slightly differently. So trying to meet all those needs at once again can be difficult. But just anything that looks like it might be italic because a lot of dyslexics can’t see italics, they’re not aware that they’re there unless they’re wearing specialized lenses or they’re really focusing, and it can give them a migraine to try. So anything that looks like it was handwritten, you know, you’re trying to do a script or if it’s a slightly wiggly, it tends to even if they can read it, it causes so much extra processing that it can be draining, cause fatigue, and just make it more difficult to want to engage with what’s written. And in the end, that’s what our website is for. You want people to engage. So ensuring that it is as accessible as possible is widening your audience. This is for you as well as for the audience, you know. So yeah, just just try to make them. I know you want it to look pretty, but it should be function over aesthetic. Really.

00:06:42
Frigga: Oh yes. That’s what I realized over the years. I am dyslexic. If there is a lot of pictures and flashes on the website when I first open it, then I leave immediately. It needs to be calm so that I can focus on the text instead of all these sensory inputs I get really annoyed about. Yes, I read a bit about it and if I understood it correct, an example of a font I still have to look into it is Colibri.

00:07:16
Debbie: Yet Colibri is one that most most people consider to be easier to read. There was an effort a little while ago, the British Dyslexia Association. I don’t know who did it, but they certainly endorsed it or shared it on their website. A dyslexia friendly font, however, and here’s where not speaking to us first and speaking over us becomes a problem. It only worked for one kind of dyslexia. And so you had people who have Irlan syndrome, for example. it used to be called visual dyslexia. Then it was called Irlan syndrome. Now it’s called visual stress disorder and it’s basically all the same same thing. It is a visual stress because of the way that the eye processes digitally. If you like, that’s a simplified way of doing it. There’s other things that go into it. And so that actually made people who had visual stress dyslexia unable to read it. So in the end, it is just about doing what’s best for most people. There will always be some people that still struggle, which is why alternative formats and just making sure that all the rules are also, not rules, the other guidance is also followed because then that makes it easier. Such as having a white background with black writing is a huge no. This isn’t just for dyslexics. This is for anybody who suffers with migraines, anybody who’s got a visual processing issue. Anybody that wears glasses that it might reflect off for other reasons. Anybody that struggles with fatigue, having those stark colors on each other, white background with black light in or a black background with white writing. It’s too much. It can trigger headaches, migraines, eyestrain, fatigue, cognitive processing issues, and demand avoidance as a result. So it makes people not want to read. And this isn’t just online. This is in print as well. Like you read things in magazines that are supposed to have this sort of witchy aesthetic, and there’s too much dark with writing and it’s not accessible. So what I tend to recommend is an off white or a really light cream light blue, something that the color is only just there. Background with a brown or a slightly green black or something. Again, where the colour is not white, just black, just to offset it and make it less stark, just to make it a little bit more gentle. You know, I don’t recommend making it all light colors because that again defeats the object. It needs to be something that isn’t. Your eye looks at it and goes, whoa! And your brain goes, whoa! You know, it needs to be something gentle so that when you look at it, there isn’t that instant to your brain. So yeah, that’s that is easy to do on websites is to just make the colouurs softer, less obnoxious. I suppose I don’t know if that’s a word that is is recognized all over Europe, but here in Yorkshire, certainly obnoxious is the best word for it. Just don’t be obnoxious with your colours.

00:10:05
Frigga: I like that.

00:10:07
Debbie: Yes.

00:10:08
Jens: If you start this with that, there is the mainly male issue with people being colourblind. Don’t make them too soft because then you at least need to check whether a colourblind person can still read that.

00:10:20
Debbie: Absolutely. The other issue with colourblind also is the same with dyslexics, um, neurodivergent in other ways. People with visual processing disorders, things like that. Migraine issues is we do not need patterns behind words. We need words or patterns. Don’t do both. Because, again, colourblind people, they’re going to struggle with that constant changing of colour, but when I say softer, if it’s too soft, nobody’s going to be able to read it. It’s literally just about making it slightly less black. Slightly less white background. Slightly, you know, just make it something other than the Grove tends to use dark green or dark blue backgrounds with slightly brown writing, because that tends to be stark enough that it stands out, but not so stark that you can’t read it, but you can do the other way around. You could do a lighter background. I tend to do cream with a with brown writing again, and don’t put any pictures behind the writing. Have them round the sides like have a border. Fine. But if you’re changing the colour at the back of the writing, I mean, a gradient can sometimes be fine. We sometimes use a gradient, but if it’s like a block of colour here over overlapping with a block of colour there, you’re just asking for the brain to go, what’s this? What are you doing to me? I’m trying to read. It’s like being in a library and somebody chewing really loudly, like back here. And then somebody else over here is moving in the chair, and you’re like, I’m trying to read. Just be quiet. This is. Be eyequiet, you know. Or brain quiet, I suppose.

00:11:45
Jens: Websites are for quite diverse audience these days. Not in terms of a wide range of people, but they also need to catch the attention of the search engines to be found on the internet. And if it’s a post on a social media page, it also needs to catch the attention of the algorithm. Don’t they favour the flashy images, the colourful websites?

00:12:05
Debbie: Here is an issue. And here is always been an issue in accessibility advocacy. Is that everything that we do to make things accessible for disabled people, and especially neurodivergent people, especially queer people, is anything that we do is against what the algorithm tells us to do, because we are the divergent, we are the minority. I’ll rephrase that. We add the strategically undervalued, the deliberately minoritized. They do it on purpose. So yes, it will be more difficult to reach your audience. However, is the normative audience necessarily who you’re trying to reach? Is that where your message is supposed to be going? You have to ask yourself, what is more important? Your ability to reach normies who are probably not going to pay attention to you anyway, or your ability to reach the people who matter. It’s a question of ethics, on the one hand, and it’s a question of directed marketing, I suppose on the other.

00:13:01
Jens: Okay, moving on. I started to mention that internet and digital access mainly means social media these days, and a bit less websites, as we used to see that. So let’s speak a bit about social media. And before we talk about accessibility, maybe about the specific importance of social media to disabled people.

00:13:26
Debbie: I myself am a recovering agoraphobic. My agoraphobia was diagnosed 15, 16 years ago and I am in recovery. It is in what they call a regression currently. So I started to really consider how am I supposed to access my faith community when I can’t leave the house and everything is in person? And so I started looking and social media was really becoming popular then. It weren’t really we had what came before Facebook. Was it face box, I can’t remember. It was called there was something before Facebook and you had Myspace and things like that, but nothing in the way of what the kind of thing that we have now. And because we have this, this free resource essentially now, it is easier than ever for people like me to access faith community. You get spaces that are carefully curated. You have spaces that can be made private, some that are public. And all of these things together make it possible for people with accessibility issues to finally have a choice in how they engage, rather than just picking the best option because the accessibility in person still isn’t there. We’ve moved along, but it’s still not there. It’s still not as good as it needs to be in order to make social media a secondary option for disabled people. Social media tends to still be the primary option of engagement for disabled people. So it’s important that we make sure that those spaces are safe, because otherwise disabled people still don’t have a safe place to go, which is unacceptable, really.

00:14:57
Frigga: I might be a little quiet, but this is a lot of information and I process slowly.

00:15:02
Debbie: I’m trying to slow down. I talk very quickly, so I’m sorry I speed up.

00:15:06
Frigga: It’s not about you talking quickly. It’s about just, you know, so much interesting things you tell about. And I want to understand. That’s me learning that I process more slowly than neurotypical persons and give me space for that.

00:15:22
Debbie: I think as well, people need to remember because having slow processing is a diagnosis in when when you’re assessed for learning difficulties rather than learning disabilities. I’ve been diagnosed with slow processing, but from what I understand from I’ve studied developmental neuropsychology and I know a lot of people doctors, professors, researchers in those kind of fields. And I can’t help but think we don’t process slowly. We process more deeply, and that takes longer. So there is that thing of calling people slow. That’s where this diagnosis comes from. It is a progression. I’ll put that in averted commas, a progression from that assumption. But actually it is just that some of the diagnostic criteria for things like ADHD, autism, depending on which diagnostic method is used, they will ask, do you see smaller details rather than a bigger picture? And the answer that they’re looking for is they want to give you a diagnosis that you see the smaller details. Because our brains do that, we don’t see the bigger picture until we fill in all the smaller details. Because when you see a bigger picture, without doing that, you might see what other people consider to be “the big picture”. Again, inverted commas for those who can’t see, but you miss more than you want. We don’t do that. We process deeper and that takes more time. So I’m just putting that out there. For anybody who sits there thinking that they’re slow and thinking that as a negative. It’s not a negative. It is a consideration. You’re considering. It’s a strength. It’s not a weakness.

00:16:56
Jens: Okay. To pick up where we were. We learned that social media is especially important for disabled people, and we need to have safe spaces there. So next question for me would be how do I recognize a safe space?

00:17:11
Debbie: I’ve got a list of red flags and green flags to look out for in online spaces, but I’ve also got a list of things that I call beige flags. So your red flags are things that if you see them, you really should be retreating from that space. A trauma response for a lot of people is to ignore them, because we do not think that we are worthy of spaces that are primarily green flags. But you should retreat from these spaces. Green flags are obviously things that should make you feel safe. A beige flag is something that, when you look at it, it may be perspective that makes it either red or green. It may be the way that a situation is handled that makes it red or green, rather than the fact that the situation came up in the first place. Or it could be a thing that on its own in isolation, is probably not that big a deal, but it could indicate down the line if it became a track record of all the, you know, in line with other behaviours, you sort of file it away and see how things progress. So beige flags are let’s keep an eye on this rather than just an immediate okay, back away. I have a list of five of each. If that’s okay.

00:18:17
Jens: That’s wonderful. I would be a bit disappointed if you would not come with examples right now after the explanation of the categories.

00:18:24
Debbie: So I have explanations in my list if that’s okay.

00:18:28
Jens: Yes.

00:18:29
Debbie: I’ll do the red flags first, because I think that we should end on a positive start with the start with the negatives. These aren’t in any particular order. This is just how the order they came to me in my head. So if you enter a space that that is able to have set rules like discord, a WhatsApp group, a Facebook group, somewhere like that, if they have unclear rules that leave admins and facilitators either confused or seemingly unable to apply them fairly, or that allow members to take advantage of their ambiguity, that’s a red flag. So, for example, on Facebook, when you create a group, it will give you some already written rules that you can just click for people to agree to. So like “be kind”, “no hate speech”, “give more than you take to the group”, stuff like this. They’re actually quite ambiguous. They’re not things that anybody has given any thought to. They’re a bot written thing essentially. So a rule like that. So for example, be kind. If you go into a group that’s got that as a rule, what does kindness look like. Kindness on one person is not kindness on another. And a lot of that is to do with perspective. This is one of the ways that disabled people are particularly discriminated against. And people whose first language is not English are discriminated against because nuance of speech is very, very difficult to discern online. So say, for example, this has actually happened to me. Uh, somebody said in a group, I’m new to paganism, I’d really like some recommendations of books, loads of people recommending some great books. Some people recommending some books that were problematic. And someone commented under one of these problematic books, I can’t remember which one it was. I’m sorry they said that person’s transphobic. Just to make you aware so that you can make a choice about whether or not you want to support that author. She was very, very polite about it. Somebody read that as this person’s being condescending. That’s not kind. That’s against the rules. And then reported it to an admin. I commented because this person, instead of just reporting it to an admin, commented underneath and said, you’ve been reported. This is really nasty. So I commented and said, I think there is a difference between being unkind, being patronising and being nasty. These are the very distinct things, and I don’t think that that’s what this person was doing at all. The admin then came along and said, you’re all arguing. That’s not kind and removed a lot of us. No discussion, no looking into the nuance, no considering whether or not that initial person who was just given some advice which had been asked for technically, whether or not that person had been unkind at all. You know, so it’s not enough to read the rules and think, okay, I’ve interpreted it to interpreted it right. They need to be clearer. Ambiguity is not our friend. And again, ambiguity does discriminate against neurodivergent people because we don’t like ambiguity. We like to have explicit instructions to make sure that we are understanding expectations correctly.

00:21:26
Frigga: The example you give to me sounds you’re not allowed to be honest.

00:21:30
Debbie: That’s a completely different issue that we could go on about for such a long time. When people say, oh, nobody wants my honesty. There is a difference. Can I swear? Is that allowed? Because I feel like a swear word is necessary here. There is a difference between being truthful and being a cunt. Now I can go both ways. I can be truthful and I can be a cunt. But. And there is a middle ground. But most of the people who sit there saying, oh, you just can’t handle the truth. You’re being a cunt. Yeah. I don’t see you doing that. I think you’re a lot like me. You just try to be honest. You just try to give your perspective. I’ve got a rule about this sort of later on in my list, where there is a difference between somebody deliberately being hurtful and just telling the truth, and too often because people are trying to stop the unhelpful. They don’t allow just the bald truth because they don’t allow nuance. They don’t allow for intention. And that again, that’s a beige bag for me, someone who can’t tell the difference and isn’t willing to ask, did you mean for this to be hurtful or are you just being honest? Am I projecting the hurtfulness because there’s no tone of voice? At which point I’d be like, my tone of voice would not help you here. You’d probably still think I was being a cunt, but that’s just me. So yeah, it is difficult. I still would say be as honest as you want to be, because if somebody is going to read something into it that’s not there. That’s discrimination in itself. They’re putting that on you. That’s not something that you’ve done.

00:22:53
Frigga: But that’s something which is always another problem that can happen when you only write. If I read back some things I wrote and I can okay, now I read it back, I can understand why people read something else in it.

00:23:08
Debbie: I think that’s fair. And I think we should all take responsibility if we haven’t expressed ourselves as well as as we think we could. But I also think that everybody needs to give each other just a little bit of grace and give someone the opportunity. Like if if someone says something to me, that may well be truthful, but the way that they’ve expressed it makes me feel upset. I’m not instantly going to turn around to them and start calling them names and accusing them of things. And I quite often say, did you mean for that to be hurtful? Or am I? Am I reading this wrong or have you communicated this maybe not as well as you could have. And most of the time the answer is actually they were trying to be hurtful and my instinct was right. But on those types, I’ve actually had people that I started off being enemies. I’ll put that in inverted commas, people that I really didn’t get along with, that when I’ve actually started to question whether or not we’re just misunderstanding each other, they’ve become really good friends because we’ve been able to have that dialogue with each other. And the thing is, in person, it is harder to do that. We might have tone of voice and we might have gesture and body language, but that’s actually much, just as much misunderstood as words are. People look at my face. And almost 90% of the people who look at my face assume I’m being aggressive or I’m pissed off. And that is very, very rarely true. In fact, if it is true, you’re going to take a step back because my face gets worse. So my natural face just looks aggressive because I am autistic. And that is very, very common, especially for autistic girls. We are considered to be aggressive, especially here in Yorkshire as well, where we have quite a abrupt way of speaking anyway. So you put those two together and somebody who is like, for example, from the South, they’re going to read me as very aggressive. I’m not an aggressive person. I’m an easily excited person. I am an easily happy person, and my happiness and excitement can look aggressive to other people, but they don’t talk to you about it in person. They make snide remarks and they avoid being around you. They talk behind your back, but there isn’t the opportunity like there is online to actually say, okay, what I’ve said is right there for you to look at. You don’t have to tell me what I just said. It’s right there and it gives you the opportunity to actually have more accountability because it stays right there. There’s no wait. Did I actually say what I thought I said? Are they right? Did I say it differently to what I intended? Was my tone of voice just a little bit more aggressive than I? There’s none of that. It’s just words on a page. And you can read them again. You can edit them for clarity. You can apologize and say, yes. That was a little bit easy to misunderstand. And I’m going to clarify here. That’s much harder to do in person. People don’t always give you the opportunity to do it in person, whereas online they can’t really stop you.

00:25:47
Frigga: No.

00:25:49
Debbie: They can’t interrupt you because when you’re typing, they can’t stop you mid typing and say, no, hang on a second. No, you’ve got to finish what you’re typing. In fact, I actually recommend to people who are in in person relationships, friendships, dynamics if you’re struggling to hear each other, to understand each other, when you’re talking to each other because of an argument or whatever, take a step away from each other. Go into a different room or a different building and write it to each other instead. Because before you press send, you can edit it. Write everything that you want. Get all of the angry out and then before you send it, read it again. Take out all of the accusations. Take out all of the things that are going to escalate the situation and edit it and rewrite it again.

00:26:32
Frigga: That’s what I do sometimes. If I pissed off, I first write down my thoughts and being angry and then, you know, indeed, almost literally take a step back. Yeah, count to ten and then read it again.

00:26:46
Debbie: People actually underestimate anger like real, true, justifiable anger. And online is a very good place to assess whether or not this is where most people need therapy for this. You could be in a situation and your anger is completely justified. They deserve it. They deserve everything you’re going to throw at them. But because you have the opportunity to edit before you press send, you get to decide how much of you they get. Because while they might deserve your anger, they are not entitled to all of your things that could be kept private. All of your private thoughts, all of your emotions to do with the situation. They are not entitled to them and they don’t deserve that because that’s you and they clearly don’t deserve access to you. I wrote a very long message to an ex friend of mine who had basically tried to ruin my life for egotistical reasons. She almost put me in the hospital from the stress of what she did to me for no reason. Essentially, I’m one of the first people to hold my hands up and say, actually, I kind of deserved that. But with her, I genuinely didn’t. She’s one of the few people that actually I didn’t deserve it at all. There are some people I’m like, oh yeah, all right, I deserved that. But with her it was not true. So I wrote this big, long message intending to send it to her, telling her exactly what she’d done to me, how it had made me feel, hoping that it would make her feel some guilt and therefore mean that she would think twice before doing that to somebody again. And I did what I usually did. I wrote it for the emotive. I was very angry and upset when I wrote it, and then I waited before I sent it, deciding that I would edit it before I sent it, and actually decided not only am I not going to edit this because it’s fine as it is, she deserves all this anger and all this swearing and all of this volcano of rage. But I’m not going to send it either, because this is mine and she doesn’t deserve it. So it’s actually still on my phone. And I’m not going to say that I’m not going to send it if she pisses me off again, because I might do. But at this moment in time, you know, so you get more active choice online. Some people used to say to me growing up that it’s your choice how you react to things. That’s crap. It’s bullshit. Most people grow up in a situation where if they don’t have an immediate reaction to something, somebody else will have that reaction for them. Especially if you’re a girl, especially if you are not white, especially if you are minoritized in some other way, Somebody will speak over you and say what they think your response should be, and then they’ll judge you for the response that they’ve given you. Online, you get the opportunity to stop, breathe, and respond instead of reacting. But that’s a skill that you have to learn because of all of these years of conditioning, have not been able to do that. That’s why we have a powder keg online at the moment. People say the first thing that comes to their head, instead of recognizing that actually, this is a brilliant tool for us to be able to sit back and consider before we respond, respond instead of reacting. Most people again need therapy in order to do that. So it’s not it is a privilege to learn that skill. It is not a given and that is a shame. However, online is the perfect place to practice it because yes, somebody else might get a word in before you respond. But so what?

00:29:58
Frigga: What comes to mind now for me is that what you’re talking about? Is that you? I think you said it already. You have to take responsibility and you have to look at yourself.

00:30:10
Debbie: Oh, yeah.

00:30:11
Frigga: You really have to look at yourself. And what does it do to me? How do I respond? And interesting to make a distinction between reacting and responding.

00:30:22
Debbie: Yeah, I learned that the hard way, really hard way. When I see someone now saying, well, it’s your choice how you react to the way to the way that people treat you. I get so mad because it’s not our choice how we react. A reaction is instinctive, and a reaction is more often than not, a trauma response.

00:30:41
Frigga: Yeah, and I think that people way too often use the word choice with a lot of things in life. There is, in my opinion, less choice.

00:30:51
Debbie: Yeah. Just because you did something and it was reactionary, it was possibly a trauma response. And it’s not something that you felt you had full control over. It doesn’t mean that you also don’t have to accept personal responsibility for what that does to other people. Your mental health issues, not you personally, but obviously the general view, our mental health issues are not an excuse. They are a reason. But I say this so often I feel like a broken record. They are not an excuse to get away with emotionally damaging other people. No, I say this so often, and the thing that kind of annoys me is since I founded the Gro and we’re supposed to be, you know, it’s about accessible paganism from the ground up. It’s about advocacy, it’s about peer support. But most of the stuff that we’ve had to deal with is actually disabled people trying to use their disabilities as an excuse to damage other people. I’ve just recently had this situation. Obviously, I’ll keep everybody anonymous. Where there was a person who claimed that because they were autistic, they didn’t understand that the things that they were doing were harmful to others. Their behavior was sexually predatory, and it was very deliberate. It was orchestrated. They were deliberately using a minoritized title label identity, not an autistic one, another one to get women alone and to make them uncomfortable with sexual innuendo, touching, etc. technically sexual assault. However, it hasn’t been called that by the people in the situation. They were using online spaces to find these women, get them to trust them by using disabled and queer identities, by painting themselves as these minorities. And then they were using them to get them alone. And then when they didn’t get the desired response, and these women were protecting themselves and putting boundaries in place and being extremely safe. They then went and got a solicitor to try and sue the group that they used to get access to these women, and I was brought in because they were concerned not for themselves. They were concerned that they had discriminated against this person because they were autistic. It’s like, no, this shows a very, very calculated individual and whether they are autistic or not. It does not excuse the fact that these people, these women. One of them is young. I think she was 17 when it first started. And this person is in their 60s. None of that excuses the danger that they were put into, even if they are autistic. And I feel like my group is being weaponized against my own community because of it. So yeah, these online spaces are being used by predators and so ensuring that we are considering ourselves within the space, it doesn’t just keep other people safe, it keeps us safe. So we all it all sort of feeds in together.

00:33:33
Jens: Yes it does. We are straying on I think.

00:33:37
Debbie: Yes.

00:33:38
Jens: And we’re covering a few things which I would have talked about later anyway, so that’s all fine.

00:33:44
Debbie: Okay.

00:33:45
Jens: But maybe what’s the next.

00:33:47
Debbie: Should we get back to the list?

00:33:49
Jens: Yes, exactly. Just the next one there, please.

00:33:52
Debbie: Yes. So admin power that is unfairly distributed. We’ve covered a little bit of this already. So for example, if one person is allowed to were to act in a toxic way that isn’t specifically against the rules. Again, this ambiguity comes into it. But someone who isn’t being malicious breaks a rule by accident. Like, again, the unkind one. I probably could have put this as just one, and then admins don’t accept situational nuance. For example, I was involved in an altercation where somebody said something quite silly like silly haha. And I made a joke in response. Everything was fine. And then another person came in and called me the R-word, which is a hate crime because it is a slur against somebody with a protected characteristic. And when I said literally, how fucking dare you? The admin said, because I swore I was as bad as that person who had committed a hate crime against me, who then proceeded to threaten me and tell me she knew where I live. And the admin still said that we were both as bad as each other. That is a huge red flag, even if you’re not in that situation. Even if you were just a witness. Don’t stay in a group like that, because if it can happen to one person, it can happen to you even if you don’t have any protected characteristics. Even if you’re not a strategically minoritized person, it can still happen to you. So definitely leave that situation. I’ve got the police involved in that. Just as an FYI, if somebody threatens you online, you can go to the police, especially if they tell you that they know where you live. If admins engage with members in toxic ways publicly, that’s a huge no. Admins are also group members. A lot of the time. If you get a minoritized people as well, like a lot of the groups I’m in, I’m an admin or a founder of that group because there wasn’t a group available for what I felt I needed it for, so I created it. You get that a lot in minoritized spaces, so I should get to engage in that group as more than just an admin. I should get to be a member. However, that does not mean that I don’t have further responsibilities. If an admin doesn’t take that seriously and just argues with everybody in their group with no consideration to how toxic that makes that group just leave, that’s it’s it’s not going to improve if the people in charge at that Toxic. This one’s probably self-explanatory, but I’m going to say it anyway. If members, particularly those who are new to the group and especially new to paganism, are told there’s only one correct way to do something, or told that what they’re doing is wrong. This this is a bad sign if admins let people let members get away with speaking to newbies like that, that’s that’s not a good sign. Faith is personal and we should feel free to express it. However, it feels right for us as long as what we do isn’t harmful to others, and preferably also not harmful to ourselves. I’ll just put that out there because we matter too. It’s worth noting that an exception to this is if someone asks for advice based on historical accuracy, because obviously that is a thing, particularly within Heathenry or within reconstruction, reconstructive paganism. But if someone’s giving advice on historical accuracy, they need to cite their sources and they need to do so in a respectful way. If what they’re saying is slightly divergent from the agreed understanding of something that they’re citing. That’s even better because it shows nuanced perspective. However, they have to again write their sources and say something like, this is a little bit out of left field, but I consider it this way. It needs to be empowering. And the thing to remember mostly is ancient paganism is not modern paganism. It’s all well and good to be historically accurate. It’s all well and good to say to to someone, okay, you do it this way. But really that doesn’t have any precedent in this practice. We need to be safe and relevant in the now. We need to be safe and relevant to us. So telling someone that what they’re doing is wrong, even if it is historically inaccurate, if they’re doing something that’s not inclusive, if they’re doing something that is harmful to others, call them out on it. Be rude to power always, but make sure that you’re punching up in that case and and don’t do it in a disrespectful way unless again, you are being rude to power. My final red flag and I thought that this one was really important. Discomfort in pagan spaces is often weaponized, and that’s online and offline. If somebody feels uncomfortable or unsure doing something. It’s often used as a spiritual gatekeeping. So people are dismissed as not pagan enough or told that they’re spiritually failing. If they can’t do something, this is particularly bad for disabled people and neurodivergent people who have to adapt practices in order to make them accessible. This can include admins being secretive and asking members to message them for advice instead of doing it publicly. It can include members turning around and saying, that’s not how we do things here, and making them feel excluded from that group. None of that’s okay. People do things in different ways, and discomfort is not. It’s not an attack. If you feel uncomfortable with something that’s not an attack on other people to point it out, and people treat it as an attack and they shouldn’t. Especially in online spaces where discomfort could be projected. You know, you might think someone’s being uncomfortable because they’re challenging something, but actually they’re not. They’re, they’re just pointing out that something makes them uncomfortable. So yeah, discomfort is often weaponized. And that is a huge a huge red flag. Don’t do it. That’s my red flags.

00:38:59
Jens: I would like to question you a bit about the last one. When you said the red flag of an admin says, oh, message this to me in private. I’m not discussing this publicly. Yes. And I’m kind of rotating in my head through situations. And my first response is, I can see that that can be dangerous to to pull people out and to have them in completely under control. But it may also be useful to switch with the discussion to a much smaller room in some places. So if I think I see a newbie there and I think he’s a complete newbie, he just doesn’t know what he’s doing there and he’s putting out he’s showing off some symbols, for example, where I know the group consensus is: you don’t use them. They are not historically accurate. And they’re also considered to be usually quite right wing. But I know these people may just complete newbies. I might have the urge to say, okay, let’s do this in a private circle first before all the others go mad at you. Maybe the place is not that safe, but.

00:40:03
Debbie: There is a difference between okay, this this has the potential to escalate into a situation where you’re made unsafe in this group. So let’s take it private. That’s great. But what is it’s more secretive than than protective is what I’m talking about. When someone says, for example, oh, um, you could get more knowledge in that area if you engage with this particular society or this particular group, but it’s members only and it’s by invitation. So you’ve got to message me. There’s certain language that people use that make it seem as though having private conversations with a particular person is their only way to access certain knowledge and understanding certain groups. And that’s the kind of thing that we don’t want to say. If somebody is doing something potentially dangerous And you say, you know, something like, okay, this is actually really problematic, but I don’t want to open the discussion here because that could actually turn into a big, massive argument within the group. So if you feel safe, feel free to message me and we can discuss this, but not, oh, these are really dangerous. Come talk to me and I’ll tell you why. It’s the language with which you do it. Because people who are trying to keep themselves safe, the only way they can do that is to assess whether the language someone is using is potentially predatory, especially young girls online, especially young queer people online, especially neurodivergent people online. The only way we know how to keep ourselves safe is the safety coding in language. We have to know, is this person actually saying something? To me that is a red flag, for they’re just trying to get me alone to abuse me, to be toxic, to manipulate me. And that’s it. That sounds extreme. I’m saying it out loud, and I know that people are probably going to be listening and thinking, are you being a bit sensitive? No, I’m not being sensitive. People kill themselves over these issues, so, you know, you’ve got to take it seriously. So. Yeah, it’s just about the way that you word it. Making sure that it’s clear that actually you’re trying to deescalate a situation. Not pretend that you’re some kind of elder leader in some cult that you’re going to give them access to if they suck your dick. And again, that’s quite crass, but it’s that get the nuance right if you can, if you’re able and if you don’t feel like you’re able. Ask somebody you trust is what I’ve written that I intend to send to someone. Okay. Is what I’ve written a green flag or a red flag? Because asking each other and getting other people’s perspectives, it keeps you safe. You don’t want someone coming into your inbox that you’ve offered to help coming in there and then misconstruing what you’re doing and then making accusations against you. Because that happens too, especially again for neurodivergent people, people whose first language isn’t English. If they speak to them in such a way that a person has decided, okay, I don’t feel safe now. People are really quick to make accusations without first checking. Actually, was that your intention? So protect yourself when you’re putting that out there as well. You want to offer this support and you want to be helpful to the community. But you you matter too and your safety and your privacy matters. So yeah, it’s it goes both ways.

00:42:58
Jens: Asking what the people actually mean, I think is usually a very good thing. And also asking for for sources. You have this example before that someone said, oh, this author’s actually transphobic. What I usually do then, because it is said quite easily in this way, it’s oh, that’s terrible, I don’t want that. But could you please tell me how and where. I had incidents before when someone said to me, this author is not relevant anymore, he’s transphobic. And I was slightly shocked. I didn’t expect that at that moment and said, oh, that’s terrible, but could you please show me where, what he said, what he’s written? Oh no, he’s not relevant anymore. And I thought, that’s not Okay. You should be able to clarify this.

00:43:43
Debbie: Yeah. I mean, a really good example of this is not relevant to the pagan community, but literally came up with my child yesterday. I put something on the TV, and it had an actor in it who recently had been embroiled in some controversy because he said that he threw his wife’s birth control away. And there was this huge thing about the fact that they now have children. And he had admitted throwing to throwing her birth control away, that consult. It’s illegal and it is reprehensible. However, it actually transpired that it was an interview that he and his wife had done together that had been deliberately doctored to make it look as though he’d done this horrible thing. But what they’d actually done is decided to have a child got very drunk to celebrate because, okay, fine, and thrown out the birth control. And in the morning they forgot and she couldn’t find her birth control. They were telling a funny joke about their marriage, and it had got misconstrued as he’d done something to Her. That’s it’s not okay for people to do that because that’s their private life. Another example is exactly this. Somebody was in a group. They asked for a recommendation. The group that they were in had a handy list. It’s not AUK. I hasten to add, before anybody, any of the listeners think that it wasn’t an AUK, it was a heathen group. It wasn’t an AUK group. They had a handy list. The list hadn’t been updated in a couple of months because who’s got the time, you know, to keep updating. And somebody got very, very angry that there was a person on that list who is transphobic. This knowledge that this person was transphobic was quite new, and the list hadn’t been updated, probably because they forgot that she was on it, not because they were just keeping her on there. Because I know the people who run this group and they’re extremely inclusive. But this person, instead of saying, are you aware and then offering some evidence, just got really, really mad and started insulting everybody in the group that this person was on this list. And it’s like, if you’d have just said, can we please remove this person or are you aware that this person is this? It would have been done instantly, but because they just went straight to I’m going to start screaming at you. They were reacting rather than responding. It didn’t give anybody else the chance to respond. It just gave everybody else a trigger to react to. And that’s that’s not helpful to anybody. By all means, get triggered. You don’t need somebody’s permission for your mental health issues to go blah. You know, I’ve got complex PTSD. I went through the entire first 35 years of my life as just a walking, exposed nerve, and I was triggered constantly. Everything made me feel anxious. Everything. I’ve got 17 separate obsessive compulsive disorders, all linked to different things. So, you know, I was an exposed nerve all the time. So I have done this. And the reason that I feel confident saying that you can learn to respond instead of react. I’m not doing that. If I can do it, you can do it too, because that’s ableist nonsense. But what I’m saying is this is a good way to learn online, where you can take a step back. Back to what Frigga and I were saying is a really good place to learn to do that. And it’s not just about situations that you come upon, it’s also situations that you might insert yourself into. Like you were saying Jens about saying to someone, you can come to me if you need to de-escalate this situation, let’s move it here. You can always withdraw your consent and say, okay, now you’ve come to my inbox. This is getting uncomfortable for me. And so now I withdraw my consent. Consent culture is everything. This is also on the list further down. So I’ll I’ll get back to the list. So beige flags now. So these are the ones that nuances is much more important. The way that things unfold are much more important. So if you’re going to a group and there are no rules specifically about folkish issues, or if there are no rules against the one size fits all, the one rule fits all issue, this might just be because it hasn’t come up in that group before. It might not be a red flag. It might not mean that they are folkish, or that they encourage people to say, this is the only way that you do it. It might just be that it is. It hasn’t come up and the admins haven’t thought about it. Ignorance is not always an evil. It’s not always a good. It’s never a good thing. But it’s not always an outright evil. So in the social climate, obviously we want to again do that safety coding. Is there any words here that make it clear that this is inclusive? There might not be any specific wording there, but it might just be ignorance. And it’s up to you to decide whether or not you want to risk going into that space and just waiting to see what happens. You may feel the need to just leave right away, join it all, and that’s fine. But there is also a lot of guilt at the moment. There’s a lot of shame inherent in not doing the inclusive thing, which is fine. We should be shaming people for being bigots. Fine. But where we are, we’re already minorities in the pagan community on a global scale. We are a minority faith group, and so finding spaces that are safe and well curated, well facilitated can be difficult. So if you want to make a choice and say, I’m going to wait and see, because this is about a specific thing that I want to be involved in, it’s not a crime to wait and see, to see what happens. You might be a positive influence on that group and make it help to make it more inclusive. And you get to decide if you want to put that emotional labor in. People can’t guilt you into doing it. They can’t guilt you into not doing it. It’s up to you. So that’s why this is the beige flag for me. Number two, if admins and facilitators aren’t easy, easily identifiable in a space, there could be a genuine reason for this. It could be to protect them, because the group that you’re in is specifically for a minoritized group. That actually is, their identification would put them in danger. There are certain groups, like the Pagan Federation used to have a group specifically for trans members of the Pagan Federation and trans community members. You could not get in there unless you were willing to identify yourself in the questions. The entry questions as trans because it was not for allies. It was specifically for them. And so people being able to hide their identity was important to their safety. So it’s not a red flag if you can’t immediately identify the admins. When people say that it is, this is why I put it as a beige flag. You need to be completely open when you run a space. No you don’t. Your safety is important too. So if you can’t identify the admins immediately, that’s not necessarily a red flag. So just consider with all the information that you have available. Don’t look at that, that one thing in isolation, despite how much people might sort of demand that you do. Because there is a big thing at the moment about transparency. And I’m all for transparency, but not where safety is concerned. Sometimes safety does not need transparency. I’ve actually written here never look at things in isolation. Behaviour is always a pattern, so be vigilant. This is one of those times when you need to look at it in a pan. Number three if there’s no clear way to make reports about toxic or harmful behaviours and situations. This could indicate that the admins have not come across the situation before where they needed to write these rules. Not everybody does what I do and writes every single rule they can possibly think of before they launch a group that takes absolutely ages. Some people launch it and then things come up and they adapt as they go. That’s fine for most people. So just consider. These are supposed to be low stakes spaces. It’s social media. They’re not supposed to be you know, the the Ministry of Defense level institutions, you know, with all of these rules and structures and policies and procedures, it’s just social media. And while safety is important, a lot of your safety has to be taken as a personal responsibility. These people, they’re not they’re nowhere near you. Possibly. You know, there could be at the other side of the world. So you have to take responsibility and not just assume that somebody else is going to keep you safe. That’s not victim blaming. It’s living in the reality that we’re in as a woman, as a neurodivergent woman, as a queer, neurodivergent woman. I’m not going to turn around and say that I should have to carry my keys between my fingers in case somebody attacks me in the street. I’m not saying I should have to do that. I’m also not saying that I’m not going to do it, you know? This is the same thing. Keep yourself safe. Don’t automatically assume that a lack of clarity that a lack of procedure and policy in a Facebook group, in a in a discord group is necessarily a red flag. It might not be. Again, don’t look at things in isolation. Look at things as patterns of behaviour. And again, consider whether or not you have the emotional labour to offer to support the group with moves in moving along in this way and becoming more safe. I’m about to make two really, really controversial statements in my next two points. Okay, so accessibility is often used as a flag waving thing. You don’t have these accessibility procedures. Therefore this is a red flag. I don’t agree as possibly the leading accessibility advocate in the UK for pagans, because I’ve been doing it this long and I’ve been the loudest because I’m the most obnoxious. I think that’s crap. You can’t just turn around and say if something isn’t accessible, that it is automatically an unsafe space because access means different things to different people and ignorance is not a crime. Again, I’ll say that a lot. So this one is difficult for me to put up the beige flag, but I think it’s ethical to put it as a beige flag. Accessibility tools such as content warnings, trigger warnings, image descriptions and alternative formats of online resources should be a green flag. But it is not simple enough to say that a lack of them is a red flag, because it assumes a level of shared understanding that is ableist in itself. So shared understanding is this thing within psychology for people who aren’t aware. You’ve heard of people saying that someone’s got common sense. Common sense is not logic. People use those synonymously and it’s incorrect. Common sense is a shared understanding of a thing. So if you go into a space and they do not share your understanding of what accessibility looks like. That does not mean that it’s a red flag. It means that you have a more nuanced or in-depth, or just a different idea of what accessibility is than the people in that space. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.

00:53:37
Jens: I would like to interrupt you for a moment here just because I. Otherwise it’s building up on me. Sorry, but common sense is dead to me at least. It’s it’s nonexistent because you get these people these days. Some people would say, oh, it’s common sense that only a man and a woman can marry. I think, no, that’s crap. I’ve married my husband. So if anyone argues with “common sense”, it’s okay. You’re out of arguments. Please, please come with real arguments because this is not one.

00:54:08
Debbie: The problem is common sense is one thing. And again, it is a shared understanding of something. But people use it as logic. They’re using it wrong. Common sense means we all share an understanding. Nobody shares understanding because the reason that it doesn’t work is because people assume that everybody thinks the same, and obviously we don’t. So like you say, it’s bollocks. I grew up being told you you’re very intelligent, but you’ve got no common sense. Good. Because that means that I don’t think the same way as everybody else, because the way that everybody else thinks is bigoted and stupid. And I do not care if I don’t think the way that they do. It used to upset me. It doesn’t any more. I use it as a badge of honour. So yeah, I am a logical person and I am a sensible person. I have good sense, not common sense. I think that is that is the big difference. So when people go into these groups, you should not just assume that everybody thinks the same. Thinking differently is a strength, not a weakness. And I think that’s what I’m trying to portray in these in these beige flags. It’s all about the nuance. So instead of calling this a red flag, we need to call it a beige flag and instead analyze whether or not accessibility, not whether or not accessibility is considered, but how it’s considered. So if someone asks for an image description and is told no, or the attitude towards them is dismissive or even abusive. This is very, very common. That’s a clear red flag. However, if someone asks and they’re told yes, and it opens up discussions about accessibility, that could only be a good thing. You should not have to go into a group and expect to exert emotional labour. But if you’re willing to, if you’re expecting to, because you went into that space and you could see that these things weren’t being done, and then you insert yourself in order to do it, you know? Fine. One of the things that you can do, I do this quite a lot, again, because I’m obnoxious. If you’re not obnoxious enough to do this, feel free not to do it. If you’re not, don’t feel safe doing this. Absolutely do not do it. Protect yourself first. But one thing that is a good test of whether or not a group is safe is content warnings or trigger warnings, because these are the kind of things that if you ask for them, you will automatically see all of the toxic people coming out of the woodwork and start in being abusive. So if you ask for a content warning on a relevant post and you get a positive response, sorry, I really should have put that. I’ll do it now or even a discussion. I wasn’t aware that this needed one. Can we discuss why you think it’s it’s necessary? Anything that’s positive or even neutral is fine, but if you get people coming up and going, oh, is the snowflake and oh, somebody triggered or don’t be a baby or, you know, it’s just a post or something like that. That’s not a safe space. So this beige flag is more like a look around and find out flag. You can use it to gauge what’s going on. Again, if you feel able, if you feel willing to exert that emotional labour and if it’s safe for you to do so, do not feel compelled if it’s not safe for you to do it. Here’s my other very, very controversial statement. There are much more groups these days that are having “no politics” rules. This is a beige flag for a very, very specific reason. This is why it’s not a red flag. It depends on its application. Nothing in life is apolitical. Anybody who says that politics does not infect, I’m going to say infect very, very deliberately rather than effect. They say that it doesn’t infect every part of everybody’s lives. They are ignorant. And I’m not calling them ignorant as an insult. It is just a statement of fact that they are ignorant of the fact. And that means it’s probably coming from a place of privilege, because they haven’t seen the ways that politics impact their life. Queer people see the way that politics impacts their lives. Neurodivergent people do. People of not white heritage. And I will say it deliberately that way, because white supremacy sucks. All of those things, you cannot get away from the way that politics impacts your life. If you’re in these groups, you should not be able to be able to be pagan without seeing the way that politics affects our lives, because our lives as pagans are still gatekept. We still cannot get the same privileges that all the other faiths have. Because we’re pagan. Because of the way that they have capitalized through their faith in ways that we can’t do now, all of these things are the ways that politics affects our lives. So everything we do is facilitated or managed by policies, systems, and the politics that are impacted by them from interpersonal and community level politics. Like as in, when you go into a group that has its own politics, what is it that somebody called it once they was it bitchalics. They put politics and bitches together to make a word. I can’t remember it was, but it was. It was very good. Okay. To to elected and appointed appointed officials in the office. So setting a rule of no politics can seem like a green flag or a red flag on the surface, depending on your viewpoint, because it appears on the surface to be about avoiding conflict. It’s also so easily weaponized against strategically undervalued and minoritized groups such as the disabled. The black community have already said all this queer folk. Accessibility is a political issue. Whether or not someone can ask questions about if an event is safe for trans folk to attend, or if a person of South Asian heritage believes that they’re being pushed away from traditional in-laws practices and would like advice, these are all reasonable things to discuss in pagan spaces, and the way a no politics rule is applied can highlight the difference between a safe space and not only a toxic one, but a potentially radicalized space. So if you go into a space and it says no politics again, it could just be ignorance. It could just be they don’t want you to bring up. I’m voting for this party, and everybody who disagrees with me is a trap. It could just be a non conflict thing. However, if you see it start being weaponized, that’s that is a huge problem. And I would actually in the current climate, here’s my big controversial statement. In the current climate, I would not recommend leaving it if you feel safe to do so. If you feel able to exert the emotional labour again. Broken record emotional labour. If you feel able to do that, stay in this space and get loud if they are using the “no politics rule” to radicalize people. Be a fucking radical and do it the other way. Be a lefty snowflake and whine at them and cry at them and show them what emotion looks like. That’s what I say to that. So yes, it is a beige flag because I don’t think people should be punished for not being aware of absolutely everything that’s going on in the world right now, because the only reason those of us I’m not going to say us, I’m not aware of everything going on. Those of us who are aware of more in the world right now. The reason that we are is because our brains are broken and nervous systems are broken, because we’ve been forced to be made aware of absolutely everything. Don’t punish people for not being broken yet by the system. That’s what I’m saying. Try to give people a little bit of grace. However, again, these spaces are being used to radicalize people. Clap your nails on your keyboard and become a keyboard warrior. Become a lefty snowflake. Become everything that they hate and throw it in their face. So that’s my beige flag.

01:01:10
Jens: I have a history with the no politics rule. I’m absolutely fine with that. If it’s a group which is specific about a hobby, about some topic there, because I see, okay, if there is political debate. No, we’re completely focusing on. It’s not my hobby, but let’s say model railways okay. It’s about model railways. Leave the politics out of that. If it’s a heathen group, I have been told, don’t bring up gay rights. You’re violating the no politics rule. Um, no. Sorry. You didn’t understand Heathenry. In this case. I’m telling you, you’re doing it wrong with Heathenry. Because I’m not doing that as a hobby. I’m not doing this as a hobby. I’m serious about it. So for me, in any heathen group these days, a no politics rule is a red flag.

01:01:58
Frigga: Yeah, yeah.

01:01:59
Debbie: And I think it does depend on which part of paganism you’re in as well, because obviously my advocacy covers all pagan spaces. Not not specifically heathen, although Heathenry is where I sort of sit at the moment personally. But there are other spaces that are not being weaponised, like the heathen communities at the moment, because obviously there’s a lot of radicalization going on in the folkish circles and things like that. That’s not happening as much, if at all, in some of the other pagan spaces. So again, you need to be vigilant and you need to be sure that the space, like you say, if it’s just a group for people who like the roll rite stones, not people who go to it and do do rituals are just people who like them because they’re pretty, they’ve got archaeological value, etc. and you like taking pretty pictures of them with the wild flowers and things. There’s no need for politics in that kind of space unless you get an issue like you do at Stonehenge, where they start trying to politicize them, then it has to shift, and there needs to be a political point to it. But yet in heathen spaces, it is one of those where you have to be careful. But just on what you were saying about you can’t bring up gay issues here. He hates it when I do this, but I’m going to do it anyway. Just big up to Dan Coultas and his master’s dissertation that talked about gaping assholes in gay Odin. When he eventually edits that for publication, you really want to get your hands on gay Odin because it’s glorious. So to say that, you know. Oh, so this is Heathenry. There’s no gays here. Do my dude. My dude. Not only did Odin give up an entire optical organ to get all of the delicious knowledge clearly marking him as neurodivergent, by the way, one of his favorite stims was to bend over. So just shut up. So if Odin can take a dick in the ass, so can you, brother. It really annoys me. But yeah. Read when it’s out. Read Dan Coultas’ essay on gay Odin and protect him because he gets a lot of death threats over it as well. I have my green flags now. He can calm down and go to the happy place now. Some of them are just a bit of a reverse of of some of the others. So clear and concise guidelines that put safety and inclusivity first, including rules protecting strategically undervalued groups and groups and typically marginalized groups. I say that that way on purpose, because to call someone minorities or a minority group, it doesn’t really reflect what’s going on there. They are strategically undervalued and typically marginalized. It’s something that is done to them, not something that they just are. An application of rules that shows that facilitators and admins can adjust for new situations if they’re too rigid. Now, on the one hand, fixity, fixity, fixity alert. I can’t say it. Fixity is a part of the diagnostic criteria for a lot of neurodivergent experiences, a lot of neurodivergent lives. Again, it’s a reason it’s not an excuse. So some disabled people might be perpetuating this themselves because they’re not opening themselves up to nuance. But you need to ensure that the facilitators and admins can adjust for new situations. Especially if you see and I have seen this in some groups, I’m going to be really big headed and say people will be able to see this in action in my groups. When admins acknowledge that they’ve been wrong and thank members for their emotional labour in helping to evolve the group into something more inclusive. That is something you want to be. Consent culture. Let’s talk about that. It needs prioritizing. This is a green flag if you see it in a group. Absolutely stay. This is particularly important for a number of reasons. So this is a faith community. And faith is very personal. So no one should feel pressured into sharing anything private. We have a huge problem of toxic positivity in pagan spaces, especially ones linked to eclectic paganism, Wicca, witchcraft, traditional witchcraft traditions. There is a lot of toxic positivity there, with people being told that if they don’t share personal things or they are not willing or able to engage in the most popular or the typical way that they’re hurting the space or they’re blocked or they’re getting in their own way. Don’t do that. Consent is everything, and you do not have to consent to engaging in the way that they want. In instances where online spaces are continuations of or landing zones for in-person event. This behavior is carried over into those in-person spaces. So making them unsafe. You know, making yourself feeling unsafe in the online space often leads to being, being, and feeling unsafe in the in-person spaces. So consent is imperative in all spaces. Consent is not just about touching. Especially when you have pagan issues. And I get so annoyed when people don’t consider this. Why are you pagan if you don’t consider the way that your spiritual self touches other spiritual selves? If you’re in a group ritual, it’s not about you as an individual, it’s about you as part of a group. So if you’re calling people snowflakes, or you’re calling people too sensitive because they come into a space and they’re saying that the way that you’re acting, or the way that you’re engaging in a space is hurting them or having some negative effect on them, and you fod them off or you scoff at it. What are you doing? Paganism is not for you, my brother. Go. You know, do something else. I was going to say something really offensive then, but I will hold it back and not be an interfaith asshole. But. Yeah, go. Go do something. There’s plenty of other faith practices that you can join that would encourage you in that, that kind of behavior. But we don’t do that here. If you if you wouldn’t feel safe in a ritual with a person, don’t be in a Facebook group with them. It’s all energy. It’s all having an impact on you, even if you don’t believe that. If you’re more scientifically minded as I am. Think of it this way. One of the first things that a baby learns to do by instinct is to turn their eyes away from things that they see that could upset them. They turn their eyes away from negative experiences to minimize the impact to their nervous system. If a baby can do that, so can you. The only reason we don’t do that is because we are trained as we grow up, to keep looking, to maintain eye contact with things that are hurting us. Don’t do it. If you’re in a space and you feel uncomfortable, that’s enough. You don’t need another excuse. Just leave. You are not being forced to be there. Society might be telling you that you’re forced to be there. Ignore them. They’re stupid. All of them. Look who they voted in. Just leave. You know, outing myself as politically left here, aren’t I? Just a little fucking bit. So number four, people can disagree in respectful ways and even have fun with it in the group. That’s a huge green flag. We rarely see this on social media, especially now, but it is possible to have a fun debate with many different perspectives included that doesn’t escalate into arguing, and finding a group like that can be very empowering and such an enriching experience. I went to university specifically so that I could be around people that could have debates without it descending into anarchy. And let me tell you, the higher I got from arguing with a professor was beautiful because it was all done with smiles. You can find these spaces online. They’re rare, but you can find them. So look for those. And the final one when questions are encouraged and not shamed, that’s a huge green flag. So there’s a propensity in heteronormative spaces. And I say heteronormativity is very specifically linked to patriarchy and ideas of masculinity and power. Questions get treated as as an attack on a person. And that’s not only a red flag that’s actually rather pathetic, and it highlights the person who cannot be questions as fragile and ego driven and rather aggressive. So questions are how we grow. Not only that, it’s literally how our brains work. We question everything and then sort it into a chemical code in our head to be stored in the right place. It’s absolutely fascinating looking to your neuroscience if you have the time and inclination. So if you ask a question that challenges the norms or challenges group dynamics that should be empowered. Particularly if you’ve done so in a safe and respectful way, they should not be triggered. Their ego should not be triggered into aggressive maneuvers to silence you just from you asking a question. So if you go in there and you ask a question and it’s automatically met with people going, I hadn’t thought of that. Or actually, if you read this book, that’s got a really good point on what you’ve just said. This is how dialogue is supposed to work. This is how people are supposed to communicate with each other. Look out for it. If it’s not there, see if you can encourage it. And if you can’t encourage it, leave again. Your engagement with these spaces is supposed to be enriching. It’s supposed to add value to your life, not take away from it. And I said this to my child recently experienced a breakup. My poor baby. There are people in your life that are positive experience, positive influences. There are people who are neutral influences, and there are people who are bad influences. And much like the red, beige and green flags. If you are in a space and it’s not enriching your life. You’re getting nothing out of it. Why are you there? I’m not questioning again. This goes to questioning. Not questioning you in a. What the hell are you doing? I’m questioning you: Ask yourself, why are you there? Is there a specific reason, or do you just feel that you’re missing out on something if you’re not there? This FOMO, this fear of missing out is ingrained into as it’s conditioned into us. As we grow up, it’s a neuronormative nonsense. It’s the way that the world tells you this is how you conform. You conform so that you don’t miss out on this anomalous thing that they’re saying that you should get. Don’t let it control you. In online spaces, it’s so easy to get out of. Physical spaces aren’t. In physical spaces, there could be a danger to you if you try to leave a volatile situation in online spaces. That’s less true. You can block people. You can take screenshots as proof of what people have done to send it on to the authorities. You have got much more protection online than you do in person, as a minoritized person, as a person who is strategically undervalued, as a person who is vulnerable to the evils of the world. Not vulnerable as in weakness, but vulnerable to the evils of the world. You are much more protected online just by taking personal responsibility, not in the way of everything that happens to me is my fault, but in the way of I have control over this situation, I have autonomy in this situation. Just walk away. If it’s having a negative influence on your life, and I will be around and in my groups and things. For anybody who needs help with understanding how they can safely walk away, it’s part of what what the Grove does is, is peer supporting people through that. So I am not just saying it and then leaving you and not putting my money where my mouth is. There is coaching specifically for this thing. So there’s all my flags.

01:12:38
Jens: Thank you. I think we covered a lot.

01:12:41
Frigga: Yes.

01:12:42
Frigga: A lot to take in, a lot to think about.

01:12:46
Jens: So we’ve learned now how to recognize safe spaces and different kind of safe spaces. Logical next challenge is: How do we make our own spaces safe? I think we touched into that. So we should do a little of a wrap up here about how do we make our own safe, our own spaces safe.

01:13:07
Debbie: Again, a controversial statement I’m going to make here is if you feel unsafe yourself, it’s not safe for anybody else either. So as an admin or a facilitator, you have to consider what does unsafe feel like for you? Sit with it. What does discomfort feel like for you? Sit with it because you have to recognize it in order to understand it, and then facilitate a space in which it doesn’t occur or in order to recognize it the second it starts to occur, so that you can manage how that escalates, if it escalates at all. We don’t do enough in this world to ensure that people sit with feelings. Again, this goes back to people just not being able to access therapy because of capitalism. But everybody has the ability. Everybody has the ability. And I know that might seem like a controversial and even ableist statement. Everybody has the ability to just sit down and shut up. And if you sit down and shut up, you can assess the way that you’re feeling. You need to know the sensation. And I say this specifically for neurodivergent people out there, particularly if you’ve got PTSD, if you’re autistic, if you’ve got any kind of dysautonomia such as POTS, long Covid, fibromyalgia, functional neurological disorder, ADHD, anything that stops your nervous systems because everybody has several from working in sync, it can be difficult to know what you’re feeling in a moment. Shut up. Sit down and just feel it and figure it out. Because unless you can do that, you can’t run a safe space because you don’t know what it feels like. You’ve got to know what that feeling is before you can facilitate it.

01:14:42
Frigga: Talking about feelings. Something I read about not so long ago is thinking is also feeling, and that was so useful for me. I relate to to not always immediately realize what I feel, but when I read that hey, thinking is also feeling. Yes. Thank you.

01:15:02
Debbie: Yeah, I think it would be ableist to say if you have any of the conditions or issues that I’ve just mentioned, that you can’t run a group, it would be ableist to say that, um, it would also be hypocritical because I run all these groups and I still struggle with this. However, you need to acknowledge where you struggle as well. I acknowledge that in certain situations I am very, very likely to be triggered into reacting instead of responding. So I don’t deal with those kind of situations. And I have people who do it for me. I don’t put myself knowingly into situations where that can happen, but when it does happen, because shit happens and I do get triggered into reacting instead of responding, I am always very willing to admit where I was at fault. Here’s where I get very strict with people, though. Not everything is about you, but some things are, right?. So in certain situations there will be aspects of a situation that is not about you. There will be certain aspects of situations that are about you. You have to discover what which one is which, because you can’t manage a situation and take personal responsibility for your impact on a situation until you know which is which. I had an issue where I grew up basically being blamed for everything. Everything was my fault. So I didn’t know when I was at fault and when I wasn’t, because I just assumed everything was my fault. Most people go that, especially if they’re heteronormative, mediocre white men just assume that everything is everybody else’s fault and they take no, no personal responsibility. Most people do go one way or the other. They don’t sit in that middle ground of, okay, that was their fault. This is my fault, and this is our fault, this situation. So learning how to dissect the nuance of these situations is how you create a safe space, and one way that you do that is to just be patient. I say that as a complete hypocrite. I have no patience whatsoever. Just try to give yourself and everybody around you a little bit of grace. And I love that in AUK spaces, there’s one thing that is really great is that they have the rules. Keep Frith. That doesn’t mean be kind necessarily, because sometimes, again, I’m going to be quoting my acquaintance Brian Irvine, who is a neurodivergent advocate in higher education spaces, when he says be rude to power, that can be keeping Frith. So if you keep in your mind, even if you’re not heathen, if you keep in mind all of the time about keeping a space safe, that is more keeping Frith than always being positive, it’s more keeping free than always being kind. Sometimes you have to be rude to power. Sometimes you have to tell people to fuck up. It’s just one of those that don’t do that in AUK space as they don’t like it. But in my space, sometimes you have to tell people to fuck off. If you’re running a space and a bigot gets in. You are not in the wrong for telling them to fuck off. I had a situation recently where we were trying to rewrite the rules for our online spaces for the Grove of Alethea, because there was a person within the community that had had accusations made against them of a really disturbing nature. However, those accusations had not escalated to criminal charges or civil charges of any kind, and so a lot of people were treating it as hearsay. That person wanted access to our spaces. Now, this may seem like this is none of our business and we shouldn’t get involved. But when somebody who has been accused of being a sexual predator, who you personally are witnessed engaging in behaviour that is toxic, that is potentially abusive. You don’t have the luxury or the privilege of saying that it’s not your problem. It’s not your circus, it’s not your monkeys. This monkey has come to your circus and they want entry. You have to decide where the line crosses between innocent until proven guilty, and keeping a potential predator out of a space that is full of vulnerable people. So what I wanted to do was say, I have the final call because it’s my group, and somebody has to be the final person to have the final say. Somebody has to be the one who says, I will take personal responsibility for this. If something goes wrong, it’s on me. That’s not being pigheaded. It’s not letting ego get in the way. It’s saying I will be the person that the buck stops at, that if there are reprisals, I will accept them. It’s not a position of authority. It’s not a position of power. It’s it’s a position of servitude. And I was willing to do that. One of my admins felt that I was being totalitarian by saying that. She felt that we should let this person, who was considered to be a sexual predator by a large portion of the community into the group, was me having an ego. I would rather protect my members than care what people think of me. So I would say, if you want to create a safe space, you have to take your ego out of it. You have to. It has to be about them. Like I said, some things are about you, but not everything is. If you’re talking to yourself, if you’re doing a personal ritual, that’s about you. If you’re creating a space for other people to go into. Protecting yourself is important, but you cannot put your ego or wants above there needs you can, wants and needs a very, very different things and you need to put their needs above your wants. So I think that is the the primary thing to consider are your rules for the best of everybody, or about your ego. Are you truly willing to put the emotional labor needed to facilitate this group safely into it? Or do you just want to create a space and feel like you’re in charge of it? If you want to create a space and feel like you’re in charge of it, play the bloody Sims, stick them in the swimming pool and take out the bloody stairs and watch them drown like we all used to when we were teenagers. Which probably kind of paints us as, I don’t know, sociopathic or something, I don’t know, but their computers do it that way. Do not play with emotional people who have real feelings and real lives. Like when people really hate it. When people say, yeah, but it’s not real, is it because it’s online? Why? We’re real people. We’re engaging with other real people. It’s real. It has an impact on our nervous systems. There was a study that I studied in my second year of university that said that children, because there’s all this stuff about children, don’t develop properly on video games instead of going outside. It’s bullshit. The human nervous system can tell no difference between going outside and talking to a person and talking to them online. There’s no difference emotionally at all. The only difference is the social connotation. It’s what people tell you the difference should be. And to say that an online space matters less because it’s not in person, and nobody can poke you in the eye if they feel like it is ableist. For some people, their interactions online are the only meaningful human connection that they ever get. It’s the only safe human connection that they ever get. When I was growing up, I wasn’t safe anywhere. I wasn’t safe at home. I wasn’t safe at school. I wasn’t safe in the streets. Everywhere was a danger. I was harmed everywhere. And my story is not unique. In fact, it’s so normal to have had an upbringing like mine. We should worry as a species, but that’s normal. So the only safe interactions that I ever had as a teenager were online because I could turn it off. So that made the friends that I made online the only friends I had, because they’re the only people who didn’t hurt me, you know? So to say that online relationships have lower stakes, like I said earlier, these places are supposed to be low stakes. They’re not supposed to be things that when people create them, they don’t think, oh, I need to put all of these policies and procedures in place so you can forgive them for not doing so. However, I really think before you make a group that you should consider how far you need to go in order to keep it a safe space. Who’s the audience? Think, ask yourself these questions. Who’s the audience? Who is likely to help you facilitate this space? Because that’s important to you cannot do it on your own. And if you do, do it on your own, you have a friend that you can wind to because you’ll at least need that, you know. Have somebody else look over the rules. Let’s say, for example, you are a black trans woman who is autistic, grew up Jewish and fucking, I don’t know. Try and think of another one as well as no legs, right? Let’s just say you fit every single protected characteristic that there possibly can be your experience of life. They may miss some things that other people have experience that make you ignorant to their need. Just because you think you are disabled, it does not mean that you understand that if experiences of other disabled people. Just because you’re autistic, it does not mean you understand the experiences of other autistic people. Just because you’re gay, it doesn’t mean you understand the experience of every other gay person. So when you’re writing these policies and procedures, consult other people because they might think of something that you haven’t thought of when you open the group. If somebody comes in and says, actually, I have experience or information that may show you that what you are doing here can be harmful to this group. Instead of getting offended and assuming that they think you’re stupid or they’re questioning your authority. Slap yourself if you can physically you know and think, actually, this is not about me. This is about making this space that I decided to open that I am offering to other people as a service. It’s about making it safe. It’s not being about me in that moment. If somebody comes into the space and says, you’re all liberal snowflakes and you’re all going to hell, that’s about you. You can make it about you. Kick the fucker out, sit there and have a cuppa and paint your nails and think, I did a good job there and pat yourself on the back. That’s how you assess every situation and decide, is that about me or is that about them? And then act accordingly. And and this is the biggest the biggest one. And again I’m going to swear just don’t be a cunt. That’s the best rule that I can offer when you’re in these spaces. Don’t be a cunt to other people again, unless they’re the people in power. Be rude to power. Thank you, Brian Irving. But also, don’t be a cunt to yourself. That’s so important. One of the things that I did while I was with the Pagan Federation is constantly to remind volunteers, you’re a person too. Your needs matter too. Again, not everything is about you, but this is about you. Make it about you. Dan and I, Dan and I, we constantly remind each other that we do so much for the community and in the community. Online and offline. He does more offline these days because online just gives him a migraine that we forget to practice our own faith because we’re so busy making sure it’s accessible to all the people that we forget that actually, we haven’t done anything recently. Last year, his wife was pregnant at the big Great Heathen gathering, and he focused as much as his energy, of his energy as he could on her. So he didn’t volunteer for anything. I chose as well not to volunteer for anything so that I could sit with her. And and we devoted all of our attention to her where we could. And we both sat there going, I feel like I need to get up and do things and like help. And they’re struggling over there. We should go and help them. And Sabrina was like, go do it. Then it’s like, no, we’re sitting here and we’re just going to enjoy it as participants. It can be difficult when you facilitate spaces to remember to just take time out for yourself. So you can’t run a safe space if you’re exhausted. Because even if the only person in that space that is exhausted and overworked and feels unsafe is you, you matter as well.

01:25:43
Frigga: There’s always the balance between serving the community and serving yourself.

01:25:50
Debbie: For me, I, I do consider my work for the community as an act of service. I consider it a ritualistic thing that I do as part of my faith. So I don’t know, though now I’ve said that out loud. I don’t know if I’m using that as an excuse to just not put myself first. Actually, somebody’s going to pull me up on that. When they listen to this later, I’m going to get loads of messages from my friends when I listen to it, and you can definitely use it as an excuse. Okay, I’ve acknowledged it. Stop shouting at me. But yeah, when when you’re in these spaces, if it’s not safe for you, it’s not safe. Even if you’re the only person. And it might seem a bit arrogant, but I always consider when I go into a space, I know that I’m usually the lowest common denominator in pagan spaces because I am obnoxious. I’m very unlikable. Let’s be honest. I’m just very aware of that. I’m a very unlikable person. I don’t tend to communicate in a way that is even normal for most neurodivergent people, because I’m an unmasked, neurodivergent person, and most neurodivergent people aren’t aware that they’re neurodivergent and aren’t aware in how to not be constantly fighting to meet neuronormative expectations and to conform in that way. I don’t even talk like most autistic people because of that. So I’m divergent even from my own group. So if I go into a space and people start treating me badly, which happens a lot, and then I see that the admins constantly make excuses and put it on me and make it about what I’ve done wrong. That’s a red flag again, another red flag. So if you end up making a group because of that, because you know the only way to facilitate a safe space for you is because you’re the one in control of it. That’s very valid. That does not mean that you know everything. It does not mean that you might not then be harmful to somebody else because your ego got in the way. So I think if I was to put it down to three things to create a safe space, never assume that what you know is 100% correct. Always consult with other people for one. Number two, remember that you’re important to. That’s very, very important. And number three, and most importantly of all, this word that most people hate. But I’m going to say it anyway. Don’t be a cunt. Just don’t do it. Not to yourself. Not to other people. That’s the biggest issue at the moment. You know, it’s all well and good to say, oh, be kind. No, it’s not good enough. People sitting there and going, oh, but I meant, well, it’s a problem. It’s a huge problem. People who meant well created conversion therapy for gay people. They invented the. I’m going to get very controversial here actually on T4. Look it up. That’s when they started torturing and killing autistic children and adults in order to test the gas chambers that they then used in the Holocaust. They did that to get rid of people like me because they meant well. It’s a Christianism, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions is a very poignant saying.

01:28:27
Frigga: Oh yes, I’m allergic to mean well or good intentions. That’s a red flag. And maybe I said it before in a podcast. I can’t remember if I realized that I am thinking in oh, but I mean well, or my intentions are good. I made the appointment with myself. How to say that? That then I have to look really deeply inside what my motivations truly are.

01:28:55
Debbie: What I say is you can have good intentions and not be a bad person. You know, you saying that somebody with good intentions is necessarily evil is incorrect. However, impact outweighs intention. If you went and did something because you thought it was the right thing to do, and then someone tells you, actually, this has really caused me some problems, and then you turn around and try and dismiss what they’re saying because you say, well, I meant, well, that’s the problem, not the good intentions. It’s the way that it’s dismissed. So I always say impact outweighs intention. And in these groups, that’s the key point. You need to consider the impact that everything that you’re doing is having, because it’s all well and good to say this was a good idea. The execution failed. You need to take responsibility for that and for your impact on the people around you. Otherwise, why did you create a group in the first place? Again, ask yourself the question why am I doing this? Who is the audience? You know. Personal responsibility is absolutely everything.

01:29:53
Jens: My very own short summary of this and thank you a lot for this. Loads of input. Debbie. Uh, my personal summary will be: More response and less reaction.

01:30:04
Debbie: Yeah, absolutely. And that’s from facilitators, moderators and members of these spaces.

01:30:10
Jens: For all and Frigga, is there some final words of you you would like to add here.

01:30:17
Frigga: What keeps popping up in my mind is the importance of language that we have to think about how we say it. And that also is instead of reaction, responding and that kind of things.

01:30:31
Debbie: There’s some social media where you can write something, and if it’s got any kind of language that they seem they deem offensive. They’ll actually ask you, are you sure you want to post this? And I feel like they take away the personal responsibility. We should be asking ourselves, are we sure we want to post this? And sometimes the answer is still yes. But it’s taking that personal accountability in these spaces.

01:30:54
Frigga: Yeah. And think it over again. Take that step back and take that. Even if it’s it’s nine seconds to read it through and then decide. But indeed it’s a lot of information, a lot of things which fit in my way of thinking and things. What can I do in the future? Yeah, I really enjoyed it.

01:31:16
Debbie: Always ask, I think if there’s anything that I want people to take away from this is just try to surround yourself if you can. This again, maybe an ableist statement. It definitely is a thing of privilege to be able to surround yourself with people that you trust enough to ask their opinion before you act, you know, to help you to gauge where you’re at. And very, very privileged that I am surrounded by people that I can say to them, I really want to say this. I really want to react this way. But and then they’ll give me feedback and how these are people that it’s not an echo chamber. If they think I’m wrong, they will tell me. And they are brutal sometimes.

01:31:52
Frigga: Oh yes. Please. You need those people in your life.

01:31:56
Debbie: Absolutely. Although, that said, I had a situation recently where I witnessed a hate crime online. It was two hate crimes. One was against a group that I am a part of, and one was against a group that I am not a member of, and I was still not sure if I had the right to hold this person out on what they’d done. So I took some screenshots. I sent them to some friends and said, I’m really concerned about this. Like, is this as bad as I think it is? Or am I overreacting because I do that sometimes it’s fine, I’m a bit dramatic. And my friends all said, no, that’s that’s worse than you think it is. That is really, really bad. And then they reacted for me because if I’d have done it, sometimes it’s not you that needs to do a thing, you know, if I’d have done what they did and reported it in the way that they did, it would have been dismissed because it’s me and I’m easily dismissed. But the person used their privilege and said, this is not okay, and you’re going to do something about it, and something was done. So privilege has its place, I suppose, in these kinds of situations.

01:32:55
Frigga: Yes. Oh, definitely.

01:32:57
Jens: We’re recording for almost two hours now. I’m not sure if you’re aware of that. I really would like to draw to a close here.

01:33:04
Debbie: There’s so many things, you know.

01:33:06
Frigga: Oh, yes.

01:33:07
Jens: I don’t get you wrapped up. Anyhow, you will find more things to attach to that and you will talk for three more hours.

01:33:14
Debbie: We can make another episode somewhere.

01:33:16
Jens: Yeah, I think that’s a good idea. Okay. Thank you Debbie for your loads of input. Thank you Frigga for your thoughts as well on this topic. Thank you for listening to The Wyrd Thing podcast about digital accessibility. You find us on our own website, on Facebook and Instagram and. Bye bye.

01:33:36
Debbie: Bye bye.