Hello,
How are you doing this week? In all honesty, I have been feeling quite blue again about ableism and the fight to change it. As I wrote last week, the Covid inquiry has been hard to stomach, and then there’s the general state of the world, before we even get to some personal and professional circumstances that are making ableism feel particularly relentless at the moment.
Still, at the risk of being the “this is fine” dog-in-a-fire meme, it is not all bad and this week has, for me at least, had as many ups as it has downs. One such up was celebrating my friends Tilly and Poppy’s birthdays, a lovely day with my girls that coincidentally served as a reminder, in a tough week, that so many of the people I love are in my life thanks to disability.
The other highlight of the week was the first meeting of a new queer book club I’ve joined at one of the accessible community venues I wrote about a few weeks ago. As you all know, I love books, and talking about books, and I love anything to do with community building, so I obviously had a blast.
The book we discussed was We Can Do Better Than This, a collection of essays about where we go next on LGBTQ rights. I really, really recommend it as a comprehensive, diverse and inclusive, and ultimately compelling introduction to a vital topic.
At book club, we were lucky enough to be joined by the anthology’s editor, Amelia Abraham, and the ensuing discussion was both fascinating and empowering - a reminder of how far we’ve come and how far we still need to go.
There were also some personal lessons for me. Despite being out for, as I like to joke, all of five minutes, it really struck me how familiar a lot of the conversations were to ones I have been having my entire life, as a disability activist. From the notion of queer time (how growing up or the typical experiences of doing so can be delayed by not coming out) being very similar to crip time (how ableism, a lack of care or inaccessibility have similar effects), to the ongoing debate about whether we want rights (the ability to fit in to society as it is) or liberation (the remaking of society so no one has to fit in), the issues that came up had a comforting familiarity, creating a sense of belonging in a space where I expected to feel like a lost newbie.
It got me thinking about why that might be. I do think there are particular experiences that come with being queer or disabled that are quite similar, but I think most of the similarities do not come from the being something and instead come from the resulting marginalisation. In other words, marginalisation is marginalisation no matter where it comes from, and probably all minoritised groups have a lot in common.
This thought led me to two important conclusions - or perhaps reminders, as somewhere in the back of my mind I already knew them. Firstly, that the only hope we have of true liberation is if all of us marginalised people conduct our activism, and our lives, in solidarity. (I think here, as I often do, of Audre Lorde.)
And secondly, a lesson for the disability movement: be more radical. Demand more. For too long we have been too polite in asking for access, representation, or dignity. But the stories in Amelia’s book - and indeed, the history of all liberations movements - shows us that it is in being rude, in being loud and disruptive and angry, that we claim victories that seemed impossible.
I no longer want rights - I demand justice. For all of us.
Until next time,
Lucy
Discounted books! Yes, really
There’s currently a whopping 40% off my book on Amazon.
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Aaaah! Yes! I had the reverse experience—when I first started to find community as a disabled person, I couldn't help but draw parallels to the experience I had as a queer person who figured that out at an early age. I love that both communities recognize the multiplicities of identities within the umbrella, and how community solidarity plays out.
One thing I also notice is how we have such limited language given to us by the dominant cishetero/non-disabled culture, which means folks often change the labels we use once we have found community. Like, growing up I thought it was just straight or gay but I was aware that I had different kinds of attraction, so when I first heard the term bisexual it was revolutionary. And then identifying as bisexual gave me access to queer community and culture and language and suddenly the ways of naming my experience expanded from just three options to...well, as many as you fancy. Same thing happened for me with disability where I started out calling myself a spoonie but feeling like I was "not really disabled" and then, with my foot in the door of disability culture, the words and terms and descriptions for experiences bust wide open from the limited stories I'd been told by ableds.
Also, I got your book last week! I have been reading it ever since and it is such a wonderful gift to the world! I am so glad you wrote it!