Consent
If your process requires disclosure, but offers no control over use, it is extraction—not consent.
Consent, in this archive, refers to the structures that allow people to choose how they participate, when they disclose, what happens to their words, and whether they remain inside a process that may hurt them. It is not a checkbox, a waiver, or a pre-checked box in a digital form. It is an ongoing, revocable, structurally-supported condition for safety and dignity. This tag collects writing about institutional betrayal masked as engagement, the emotional and procedural cost of coerced vulnerability, and the ways that disabled people—especially children and families—are systematically stripped of agency in schools, committees, and service systems. These pieces are a warning: if you build participation without consent, the record will remain long after your report is filed.
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Coerced care, gendered neglect, and the reframing of family collapse
It began with daily incidents that were anything but small. My son repeatedly hugged my daughter against her will, pressing into her space while she pulled away, asking for it to stop. She reported that when she turned to supervision aides for help, they told her it was fine because they were siblings. Staff framed…
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Flourishing as an ethical imperative
Like many of you, I caught CBC’s Ideas episode the other day, where philosopher Angie Hobbs spoke about the ancient Greek concept of eudaimonia—a term sometimes translated as happiness or welfare, but more richly understood as human flourishing. In a world flooded by crisis, it may seem indulgent or impractical to contemplate the good life,…
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Coerced sibling care in public school inclusion
The school saw twins and imagined comfort. What they created instead was coerced care—using my daughter’s body to regulate her brother without consent, without safety, and without repair.
