The similarities I’ve found between the experiences of being queer and being disabled

Author Lucy Webster reflects on her intersectional identity for Disability Pride Month

As the calendar flips over from June to July, we mark the shift from LGBTQIA Pride Month to Disability Pride Month. For queer disabled people, the transition is a moment to celebrate both parts of our identity. And, this year, it’s an opportunity for me to mark a whole year since coming out.

It’s been a whirlwind of a year but an incredibly happy one. One of the many joys, for me, has been learning how much the two communities have in common and, indeed, overlap. Not only are disabled people twice as likely to be queer as nondisabled people (according to the ONS), but many of the experiences disabled people have are very similar to the experience of being LGBTQIA.

Of course, some of these common experiences arise because both groups are marginalised; we all face discrimination, harassment and exclusion. I have found that this makes queer spaces some of the easiest places to exist as a disabled person, where I don’t have to worry about being stared at or asked intrusive questions about my body but instead can just relax and enjoy myself. The shared understanding of what it’s like to be a member of a minority group makes these spaces really freeing.

The similarities between the queer and disabled experiences are not all to do with the negatives that come with discrimination. Take, for example, the experience of finding your identity. While queer people may have a more recognised process – coming out, to ourselves or others – many disabled people also have to go through a similar process of accepting ourselves and understanding ourselves to be disabled. Both of these processes can be incredibly tough, but they can also be liberating and lead us to brilliant communities.

As a lifelong reader and writer, it has been particularly wonderful to learn more about the LGBTQIA community and queer lives through the discussions at my local queer book club. Again, some of the discussions were ones I could have had with so many of my disabled friends. A chat about relationship anarchy made me think so much about how disabled people, too, reject a lot of conventional dating culture, while the concept of queer platonic relationships struck me as similar to the partnerships many of us build with our personal care assistants. And I had to hold back a chuckle when I was introduced to the idea of “queer time” – how queer people’s timelines and milestones can, for all sorts of reasons, be different from the expected ones – because it is almost exactly the same as “crip time”, with which I am intimately familiar. It has been so lovely to share some of that disabled experience with a group of people who can understand it even while recognising it isn’t theirs.

Sadly, though, one thing we the LGBTQIA and disabled communities don’t share is a common experience of Pride. While of course LGBTQIA rights are still very much at risk, it is lovely to see all the events – and rainbows – that spring up in June. There is no such response in July. I can only hope that in future, Disability Pride also gets the recognition it deserves.

Lucy Webster is the author of The View From Down Here: Life As A Young Disabled Woman.

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