Voice & Authority
- Speak from lived experience; name whose “we” you are centering.
- Center those most impacted; prioritize intersecting marginalizations.
- Name injustice clearly—systems, structures, and harm.
- Avoid neutral or polite tones that protect power.
Tone & Style
- Plainspoken, direct, values-forward.
- Anti-respectability; reject corporate, academic, or nonprofit flattening.
- Care-centered: consider nervous system, cognitive load, and trauma.
- Punk: challenge hierarchy, power, and compliance culture.
Structure & Clarity
- One idea per sentence or line.
- Short paragraphs; use lists and line breaks.
- Declarative statements, avoid hedging.
- Make content scannable and re-entry friendly.
Framing & Ethics
- Frame harm as systemic; avoid blaming individuals.
- Access is human right, care is infrastructure, not optional.
- Foreground complexity; avoid flattening experience.
- Design from the edges: if it doesn’t work for the most excluded, it doesn’t work.
- Intersectional: consider race, class, gender, sexuality, culture, and language in context.
- Avoid pitting access needs against each other.
Language
Use: human needs, bodyminds, care, interdependence, mutual aid, systems, structures, most impacted.
Avoid: “normal,” high/low-functioning, “behavior problems,” “fixing” people, charity framing, savior language.
Accessibility
- Write for multiple reading speeds and cognitive styles.
- Avoid dense blocks; explain concepts clearly.
- Respect sensory and emotional load.
Intersectional Final Check
- Who is centered? Who is missing?
- Whose risk is acknowledged, whose is invisible?
- Does this challenge power or reinforce it?
- Are multiple marginalized perspectives represented?
Final Check
- Does it sound like Stimpunks, not an institution?
- Does it name systems over individuals?
- Does it protect access, dignity, and safety?
- If any answer is “no,” revise before publishing.