AAAH! Congratulations and welcome to the rainbow community!
I super appreciate your description of disabled grief as reflecting on "the life I could have lived if it wasn’t for ableism."
I think queer grief is similar—'Heartstopper' is a hard show for me to watch. I love it because it's adorable and it's so full of young queer joy and it wasn't the teenage experience I got to have. So I'm simultaneously so happy that this media exists in the world for young queers and I am sad and brokenhearted that it didn't exist until so recently and how many of us had to struggle through those years in total isolation.
When I realised I'm also disabled, it felt so similar to my experience of coming out as queer. The only language I had before coming out was the limited language of cishets and the limited language of ableism. Then I came out and found a whole breadth of terms and ways of talking about my lived experience that the status quo could barelt scratch the surface of.
One of the core reasons Heartstopper is so good is because it subverts the terrible tropes of the past that framed being queer as the problem. Being queer isn't hard, homophobia, transphobia, and cisheteronormativity being forced on people are hard. And so yea, disability isn't hard, ableism is hard. Being Black or Asian or brown or mixed isn't hard, white supremacy and racism is hard. It's an important distinction to make because it shifts the issue from the individual and personal attitudes to society.
Anyhoo-I'm so excited for your book. :) I pre-ordered it from a local bookstore and I will almost definitly scream when it surprise-arrives.
AAAH! Congratulations and welcome to the rainbow community!
I super appreciate your description of disabled grief as reflecting on "the life I could have lived if it wasn’t for ableism."
I think queer grief is similar—'Heartstopper' is a hard show for me to watch. I love it because it's adorable and it's so full of young queer joy and it wasn't the teenage experience I got to have. So I'm simultaneously so happy that this media exists in the world for young queers and I am sad and brokenhearted that it didn't exist until so recently and how many of us had to struggle through those years in total isolation.
When I realised I'm also disabled, it felt so similar to my experience of coming out as queer. The only language I had before coming out was the limited language of cishets and the limited language of ableism. Then I came out and found a whole breadth of terms and ways of talking about my lived experience that the status quo could barelt scratch the surface of.
One of the core reasons Heartstopper is so good is because it subverts the terrible tropes of the past that framed being queer as the problem. Being queer isn't hard, homophobia, transphobia, and cisheteronormativity being forced on people are hard. And so yea, disability isn't hard, ableism is hard. Being Black or Asian or brown or mixed isn't hard, white supremacy and racism is hard. It's an important distinction to make because it shifts the issue from the individual and personal attitudes to society.
Anyhoo-I'm so excited for your book. :) I pre-ordered it from a local bookstore and I will almost definitly scream when it surprise-arrives.