Hello,
It is finally February, which means it is the first day of LGBT History Month in the UK.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, I have been thinking a lot about the intersection of queerness and disability, both as a very personal experience and on a societal level. I’ve written about some of these thoughts in this newsletter already (here and here) but today I want to zoom out a little and look at the big picture.
Did you know that disabled people are more likely than the general population to identify as queer, and queer people are more likely to identify as disabled?
I love this fact.
Let’s look at the numbers.
According to the ONS and the 2021 census, “a higher percentage of disabled people in England and Wales identified as LGB+ (6.4% in England and 6.1% in Wales) than non-disabled people (2.6% in England and 2.5% in Wales).”
The percentages are small, sure, but the rate of queerness among disabled people is more than double the rate among nondisabled people.
Conversely, while 20% (ish; depending how you measure it) of the general population is disabled, around a third of LGBT people are (UK specific data is lacking, but several US studies come up with this figure). Again, this is a significant difference.
Quite why disability and queerness are so linked is both a much-hypothesised and under-researched question (the queer disabled people I know all have a similar theory!), but the link itself is undeniable.
And I think that’s pretty cool. And really fascinating. I’m adding it to my list of favourite disability facts.
This is an area I’m only just beginning to learn about. There’s lots of complex layers, from the stories of disabled LGBT people to how queer and disability theory have informed each other, and I’m excited to get stuck in.
If you’re as interested in this as I am (and why wouldn’t you be?!) I recommend checking out Andrew Gurza’s brilliant essay on disability in We Can Do Better Than This, which sets out some of the key issues facing disabled queer people today.
I look forward to learning more from Andrew and building on his great work.
Speak soon,
Lucy
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This! I think it's because disabled people already operate outside of society's "norms" and therefore it frees us up from a lot of the mainstream population's expectations and attitudes around sexuality. Though I'm guessing a bit as I became disabled AFTER I realised I was queer :P
*bangs on table* YES! I genuinely believe the experience of realising you are queer and realising you are disabled are so similar that yeah, it makes a lot of sense that from one it becomes easier to notice the other.