Disability & Queerness: Intersectional Pride
June 13, 2025
One of the most important lessons I've learned throughout my career advocating for sexual liberation is that people don't exist in single categories. We are complex beings with multiple identities that intersect in ways that create unique experiences, challenges, and strengths. Today, we need to talk about one of the most overlooked intersections in our community: disabled LGBTQ+ individuals who navigate both ableism and queerphobia while creating beautiful, authentic lives.
Let's celebrate the resilience, creativity, and wisdom of our disabled queer family while examining how we can build more inclusive movements and communities.
Understanding Intersectional Identity
When someone is both disabled and LGBTQ+, they don't experience these identities separately—they live at the intersection where ableism and homophobia/transphobia compound and interact in complex ways. This means:
Double Discrimination: Facing rejection and barriers from both mainstream society and sometimes even within LGBTQ+ spaces that aren't fully accessible or inclusive.
Multiple Coming Outs: Having to navigate disclosure decisions about both disability and sexuality/gender identity, each carrying different risks and considerations.
Compounded Invisibility: Being overlooked in disability rights movements that assume heterosexuality and cisgender identity, while also being marginalized in LGBTQ+ spaces that don't consider accessibility needs.
Unique Strengths: Developing incredible resilience, adaptive skills, and community-building abilities through navigating multiple marginalized identities.
The Historical Connections
Disability rights and LGBTQ+ liberation have more shared history than many people realize:
Medical Model Resistance: Both movements have fought against being pathologized by medical establishments that treated their identities as disorders to be cured rather than natural human variations.
Institutional Liberation: Both communities have worked to free people from institutions—psychiatric hospitals, conversion therapy centers, and other places where they were confined against their will.
Accessibility Activism: The Independent Living Movement and disability rights activism provided models for community organizing that influenced LGBTQ+ advocacy.
Overlapping Communities: Many activists have worked in both movements, understanding how different forms of oppression reinforce each other.
Unique Challenges at the Intersection
Disabled LGBTQ+ individuals face distinct challenges that able-bodied queer people and straight disabled people don't experience:
Healthcare Barriers: Navigating medical systems that may be both ableist and queerphobic, making it difficult to receive affirming care for any health needs.
Dating and Relationships: Dealing with ableism within LGBTQ+ dating communities while also managing disclosure decisions about both disability and sexuality.
Employment Discrimination: Facing multiple forms of workplace discrimination that can make economic security particularly challenging.
Family Dynamics: Managing family relationships where parents may struggle to accept both disability and LGBTQ+ identity, sometimes playing these against each other.
Social Isolation: Experiencing exclusion from both mainstream disability communities (due to queerphobia) and LGBTQ+ spaces (due to inaccessibility).
Sexuality Misconceptions: Confronting assumptions that disabled people are asexual or that their sexuality is somehow connected to their disability.
Celebrating Disabled Queer Sexuality
One of the most important aspects of intersectional pride is celebrating the full humanity and sexuality of disabled LGBTQ+ individuals. Society often desexualizes disabled people while simultaneously hypersexualizing or pathologizing LGBTQ+ sexuality. This creates particularly harmful stereotypes and barriers:
Desexualization: The false assumption that disabled people don't have sexual desires, needs, or agency.
Fetishization: The problematic tendency to reduce disabled people to their disability in sexual contexts.
Access Barriers: Physical and social barriers that prevent disabled people from accessing sexual education, communities, and experiences.
Pleasure Inequality: The lack of recognition that everyone deserves access to pleasure, intimacy, and sexual fulfillment regardless of ability or identity.
Throughout my career, I've worked to challenge these assumptions by advocating for comprehensive sexuality that includes everyone. Sexual liberation isn't complete until it includes all bodies, all abilities, and all identities.
Accessibility in LGBTQ+ Spaces
Creating truly inclusive LGBTQ+ communities requires addressing accessibility barriers that prevent disabled people from full participation:
Physical Accessibility: Ensuring venues, events, and gatherings are accessible to people with mobility disabilities, including wheelchair users and those who use other mobility aids.
Communication Accessibility: Providing sign language interpreters, captioning, audio descriptions, and materials in multiple formats for people with hearing or vision disabilities.
Sensory Accessibility: Creating spaces that accommodate people with sensory processing differences, including options for quieter environments and sensory breaks.
Cognitive Accessibility: Using clear language, providing information in advance, and creating predictable environments for people with intellectual or developmental disabilities.
Economic Accessibility: Ensuring that events and resources are affordable and that financial barriers don't exclude people with disabilities who face higher rates of poverty.
Attitudinal Accessibility: Addressing ableist attitudes and assumptions within LGBTQ+ communities that create social barriers to inclusion.
The Strength of Intersectional Community
Despite facing multiple forms of oppression, disabled LGBTQ+ individuals have created vibrant communities and made significant contributions to both movements:
Adaptive Innovation: Developing creative solutions and technologies that benefit entire communities, from accessible communication methods to inclusive event planning.
Resilience Modeling: Demonstrating how to navigate complex systems, advocate for needs, and build support networks in the face of multiple barriers.
Intersectional Analysis: Providing crucial perspectives on how different forms of oppression interact and how to build more inclusive movements.
Community Building: Creating spaces and organizations that serve multiply marginalized people who might not find support elsewhere.
Cultural Contributions: Enriching LGBTQ+ culture through art, writing, activism, and other forms of expression that reflect intersectional experiences.
Challenging Ableism in LGBTQ+ Communities
Building truly inclusive LGBTQ+ spaces requires addressing ableism within our own communities:
Language: Avoiding ableist language and slurs, even when they're commonly used in LGBTQ+ spaces.
Assumptions: Not assuming someone's sexuality, gender identity, or relationship status based on their disability, or vice versa.
Inclusion: Actively working to include disabled voices in leadership, programming, and decision-making rather than treating accessibility as an afterthought.
Support: Offering concrete support for disabled community members rather than just expressing sympathy or inspiration.
Education: Learning about disability rights and culture rather than expecting disabled people to educate others constantly.
Healthcare and Intersectional Needs
Disabled LGBTQ+ individuals face particular challenges in healthcare that require intersectional solutions:
Provider Training: Healthcare workers need education about both disability and LGBTQ+ competent care to serve intersectional patients effectively.
Access Barriers: Physical, communication, and economic barriers can make it difficult for disabled LGBTQ+ people to access affirming healthcare.
Discrimination: Facing both ableism and queerphobia from healthcare providers who may hold multiple prejudices.
Complex Needs: Navigating healthcare systems when you have both disability-related medical needs and LGBTQ+-specific healthcare requirements.
Mental Health: Finding mental health providers who understand both disability and LGBTQ+ experiences and can address intersectional trauma and stress.
Supporting Intersectional Advocacy
Effective advocacy for disabled LGBTQ+ individuals requires understanding how different systems of oppression interact:
Policy Intersections: Ensuring that disability rights legislation considers LGBTQ+ needs and that LGBTQ+ advocacy includes disability perspectives.
Coalition Building: Creating partnerships between disability rights organizations and LGBTQ+ groups rather than working in silos.
Leadership Development: Supporting disabled LGBTQ+ individuals in leadership roles rather than speaking for them or about them without their input.
Resource Allocation: Ensuring that funding and resources reach multiply marginalized communities that may be overlooked by single-issue organizations.
Research and Data: Collecting data and conducting research that captures intersectional experiences rather than treating categories as mutually exclusive.
The Role of Allies and Accomplices
Non-disabled LGBTQ+ people and straight disabled allies have important roles to play in supporting intersectional liberation:
Accessibility Advocacy: Making accessibility a priority in all LGBTQ+ spaces and events, not just when disabled people are visibly present.
Platform Sharing: Using privilege and platforms to amplify disabled LGBTQ+ voices rather than speaking for them.
Resource Sharing: Contributing financial and other resources to support disabled LGBTQ+ individuals and organizations.
Education: Learning about both disability justice and LGBTQ+ issues to better understand intersectional experiences.
Accountability: Being willing to receive feedback about ableism and making changes rather than becoming defensive.
Celebrating Intersectional Resilience
The disabled LGBTQ+ community demonstrates incredible strength, creativity, and resilience:
Adaptive Strategies: Developing innovative ways to navigate systems, relationships, and communities that weren't designed with them in mind.
Community Creation: Building support networks and chosen families that understand and celebrate multiple aspects of identity.
Advocacy Skills: Using lived experience with multiple forms of discrimination to become effective advocates for broader social justice.
Cultural Contributions: Creating art, literature, and other cultural expressions that reflect the richness of intersectional identity.
Mutual Aid: Developing systems of community support that help people survive and thrive despite systemic barriers.
Moving Toward True Inclusion
Creating genuinely inclusive LGBTQ+ communities requires ongoing commitment to intersectional justice:
Universal Design: Planning events, spaces, and programs that are accessible from the beginning rather than retrofitting for inclusion.
Intersectional Programming: Creating content and activities that address multiple aspects of identity rather than treating them as separate issues.
Leadership Pipeline: Developing pathways for disabled LGBTQ+ individuals to take leadership roles in organizations and movements.
Policy Advocacy: Supporting legislation and policies that protect multiply marginalized people from discrimination.
Cultural Shift: Working to change attitudes and assumptions within LGBTQ+ communities that create barriers for disabled members.
Your Role in Intersectional Pride
Whether you're disabled, LGBTQ+, both, or neither, you can support intersectional liberation:
Education: Learn about both disability justice and LGBTQ+ issues to better understand how they intersect.
Accessibility: Advocate for accessibility in all spaces and activities, not just when explicitly asked.
Language: Use inclusive language that doesn't perpetuate ableism or other forms of discrimination.
Support: Follow and support disabled LGBTQ+ activists, artists, and organizations.
Advocacy: Include intersectional perspectives in your own advocacy work and community involvement.
The Future of Intersectional Liberation
As we work toward more inclusive movements and communities, disabled LGBTQ+ voices and perspectives are essential:
Policy Development: Ensuring that laws and policies consider intersectional experiences rather than addressing single issues in isolation.
Community Building: Creating spaces that welcome and celebrate multiple aspects of identity.
Cultural Change: Shifting attitudes to recognize the full humanity and dignity of all people regardless of ability or identity.
Resource Distribution: Ensuring that the most marginalized community members have access to support and opportunities.
Leadership Recognition: Celebrating and supporting the leadership of people who understand multiple forms of oppression.
Celebrating Our Whole Selves
This Pride Month, let's commit to celebrating the full diversity of our community, including our disabled LGBTQ+ family who navigate multiple marginalized identities with grace, strength, and wisdom. Let's work to remove the barriers that prevent full participation and inclusion.
Intersectional pride means recognizing that people are complex, that identities interact in meaningful ways, and that our liberation movements are stronger when they include everyone. It means understanding that accessibility isn't a favor—it's a right. It means celebrating the creativity, resilience, and contributions of people who refuse to be defined by others' limitations.
Here's to everyone who lives at the intersection of disability and queerness, who challenges ableism and homophobia/transphobia with their very existence, who creates community and culture that reflects the beautiful complexity of human identity. Your visibility, advocacy, and authenticity make all of our communities stronger and more complete.
How can you better support disabled LGBTQ+ individuals in your community? What steps will you take to make your spaces more accessible and inclusive? Let's commit to intersectional liberation that celebrates all aspects of human diversity.
In Love,
Nina