Knowledge based fields were historically a “safe space” for queer and disabled people. If you are just super fucking smart and could be a wizard in a programming language, or were a genius physicist, you could get to the point where you were too valuable to fire for being trans or disabled. I may be trans and an unperson in the place I live, but I can do calculus, and there’s no way they can take that away from me.

There’s an attack on knowledge itself going on right now. A desire by the rich to control information. They want to force us into an unreality where skill and knowledge are meaningless. This hurts people who are socially marginalized, because it takes away one of our few paths for economic survival.

It goes with the attacks on DEI. What they want is a tool that can replace the need for talent, so that they can select who gets to have jobs. They want all jobs to be Graeber’s “bullshit jobs” so that skill is meaningless and they can allot them out to the people they think “deserve” them.