Why the LGBTQ+ Community Must Fight for Disability Rights

The past year and a half has been particularly difficult for many queer and trans people, as politicians ostensibly charged with our protection have worked to harm if not altogether erase us — and LGBTQ+ people with disabilities, who have faced attempts to repeal critical healthcare services, policies that make education accessible, funds that help subsidize their often sub-minimum and/or forced part-time wages (if even that), and other life-saving necessities, have received the government’s ire twofold.

To learn more about how we can come together as a community to fight for LGBTQ+ liberation for all of us, we spoke with three queer and trans disability activists about the work they're doing and their hopes for the future.

Dominick Evans is a trans quip (portmanteau of “queer” and “crip”) filmmaker, father, gamer, writer, founder of #FilmDis, and media advocate for the Center for Disability Rights. The 37-year-old, who has spinal muscular atrophy as well as asthma, chronic pain, and psychiatric disabilities including OCD, faces ableism on a daily basis — both in physical spaces (traveling is difficult, he notes, because of largely inaccessible public transport) and in his career (“people underestimate me for my capabilities every single day, simply because they see my wheelchair,” he says). But perhaps most urgently, getting adequate medical treatment can feel close to impossible. And with Donald Trump in the White House, it’s only getting worse.

“Because of my multiple types of disabilities, I’ve faced a lot of discrimination in receiving healthcare, and it's been worse when people discover that I'm transgender,” he says.

“I’ve almost died because of a nurse who wanted me to prove I was a trans man before she’d order the blood that I needed from doctors to replace the significant amounts of blood I was losing at the time.”

Evans says that while we live in a particularly tough time to be disabled and LGBTQ+, he’s heartened by the work of groups like ADAPT (on whose media team he serves) — and that their ranks seem to be growing. The group is largely lobbying for access and accommodation both for people who are currently living with disabilities, as well as those who will become disabled in the future.

“I think a lot of people don't realize how common it is to have a disability,” he says, “But disability rights are human rights.”

Still, Evans laments, protests for other human rights issues aren’t always so inclusive.

“As much as I’ve seen people brought together in the past year, a lack of inclusion still keeps many people with disabilities out,” he says. “There are disabled people in every community, but a lot of recent protests haven’t been accessible to us.”

Which is why Evans says he’d love to see other groups who are already fighting this administration work to make said fights accessible to all. He’s particularly passionate about able-bodied queer and trans people actively considering, including, and embracing people with disabilities; about straight and cis people with disabilities reciprocating those actions; and about both groups examining their own various prejudices.

“As long as trans disabled people like me exist, disability issues are trans issues, and trans issues are disability issues,” he says. “I would like the disability community be more inclusive of people who are LGBTQIA+ — especially LGBTQIA+ people of color — and for more LGBTQIA+ folks to be aware of just how many disabled people are in their midst, and to recognize that they too could become disabled at any point in their lives. I see so much anti-LGBTQIA+ sentiment in the disability community, so much ableism in the LGBTQIA+ community, and so much racism in both,” says Evans, exasperated.

“Many of us are multiply marginalized, and we all need to start respecting one another and working together. Allies, too, need to make sure we are included, actually listen to what we say, and not talk over us. I want to bridge the gap between my communities. This administration is attacking all of us, and it's harder to fight alone,” says Evans. “When are we going to stop oppressing ourselves?”

Seeking healthcare, accessible spaces, and other forms of justice for queer, trans, and disabled people of color is a mission close to Kay Ulanday Barrett’s heart. The artist, poet, and cultural strategist educates clients in academic, non-profit, and corporate realms on how to make their environments truly inclusive (physically and otherwise) for people with disabilities.

Barrett, a first-generation American-born Filipino gender-nonconforming trans person who often uses a cane for mobility when their chronic pain allows, approaches their daily work and their outside activism through an intersectional lens.

“By one token, I’m seeing more people including more accessibility notes for their events — whether things are wheelchair accessible, or close-captioned, or if there’s ASL interpretation available,” they say. “Or if nothing else, being clear about how many stairs are there, if there’s limited seating or a specific kind of seating like couches — that kind of thing.

“That said, I’m also seeing a lot of people using ‘ableism’ as a buzzword in their mission statements and grants, without really addressing people who are facing ableism institutionally and systemically,” says Barrett. “When the language of a movement is popularized, it’s divorced in many people’s minds from its roots; it becomes a way of engaging with radical politics on the surface but not in practice, and those people who are actually impacted — who did the labor and analysis in the first place — are often not included in the resulting conversations where policy is formed. People are talking about ableism, but I’m not seeing the tangible results.”

Preserving an idea’s history and origin is a common theme for Barrett, who’s heavily invested in art and other forms of creation by queer, trans, disabled, deaf, Black, brown, and Indigenous people. They’re careful to pay homage to their elders, and think critically and often about both how to ensure that people’s contributions are correctly ascribed, and how to archive and preserve the work of marginalized people in decades to come. But, they say, the art world — and New York in particular — doesn’t always return that feeling of love and dedication.

“I recently saw a Facebook event for a queer and trans art showcase that just said, ‘This event is not accessible,’ which really stripped away autonomy for people with various bodies and abilities wanting to make choices for themselves, and to engage in affirming social environments,” says Barrett. “I think this part of the country is really rigid in that way — New York is all about that ‘Buck up, make it or break it’ hustle, which can be really awful and destructive.”

And that’s not the only harmful habit practiced within creative communities, says Barrett; there’s also the constant demand for unpaid labor, which perpetuates economic hardship in certain communities while enriching and raising the profile of others.

“I just got an offer from this art space that’s mostly white, mostly cis, and mostly straight, to come to them in exchange for hosting my stay,” they laugh. “They said they can’t afford my rates, but they can put me up, they can comp my dinner, they can give me a ticket to this gala. Is that how you compensate your car mechanic — with a dinner?

“So many of my peers are constantly asked to do free work, or to be so grateful to literally sit at the table with able-bodied people,” says Barrett. “But you know what? I don’t want to be a plus-one, or in the background of a photo as some kind of poster child. Trans people and disabled people and people of color should be compensated for their knowledge, for their experience, for their professional contributions. Sitting at your fucking table is not good enough.”

Barrett is calling for able-bodied people and those with other privileges to step up — physically and financially.

“Able-bodied people need to put their bodies on the line at protests, and their money where their mouth is, and hire people,” they say. “Compensate them fairly for the expertise they bring, and invest in growing their skill sets. Connect them with the people you know who are actually willing to engage, to mentor and listen, and to help build their resumes without resorting to savior dynamics.

“Don’t burden trans people and disabled people of color with your guilt,” they say, “and if your guilt is what’s really motivating you, then monetize it. Question what your current investments are, and let the people you want to help directly steer the conversation and resources.

“It’s not that I’m a capitalist,” Barrett clarifies. “It’s that I want to see my people living beyond just survival.”

Even survival, Lydia X. Z. Brown knows, is far from guaranteed. The queer and nonbinary writer, educator, and organizer, who is autistic in addition to having prosopagnosia, anxiety, and other cognitive and psychosocial disabilities, knows the ableism they face on a regular basis is symptomatic of a society that views some lives as less valuable than others.

Brown notes a number of political actions (actualized or threatened) that do or would disadvantage, harm, and in certain cases, kill people with disabilities. There was the rollback of ADA's Title III enforcement provisions in 2017, which Brown notes “imposed restrictive requirements on individual disabled people so as to prevent enforcement of their rights through the legal system.” And then, of course, there were the repeated attacks on Medicaid that would be devastating or even fatal to the enormous number of disabled people whose lives rely on Medicaid-funded services.

Similarly political if not always legislative, says Brown, was “the abandonment of disabled people in Texas, Puerto Rico, and other areas hit by natural disasters fueled by climate change and environmental destruction.”

“I would like to see increased focus on decriminalization, and reentry supports for those targeted by overpolicing and mass incarceration — disproportionately queer and trans Black, Latinx, and Indigenous deaf and disabled people,” says Brown. “That includes decriminalizing sex work and drug use, providing safe injection programs, offering reparations like prioritization of formerly incarcerated individuals for cannabis licensing and permitting in legalized marijuana states, repealing ‘quality of life’ laws that criminalize homelessness and precarious work, and ending use of immigration prisons.”

And, while Brown acknowledges they don’t expect all of their desired changes to come to fruition in the immediate future, they eventually hope to see the implementation of free universal healthcare and education and universal basic income, as well as an end to all national borders and the abolition of prisons, including disability institutions.

When it comes to reaching these milestones of collective liberation, Brown, like Evans and Barrett, sees room for disabled people, queer and trans people, and allies to take on various central (in the case of those most impacted by ableist attitudes, environments, and policies) and supportive (in the case of those with various privileges) roles.

“Some of us can make calls and legislative visits, and some can show up in the streets,” says Brown. “Some can create powerful graphics and social media, or host small healing circles that aid in community care for those at the front lines, who are often doing the brunt of the work without remuneration, recognition, or respect. All of our contributions are valid and valuable, even — and especially — when not recognized by academic or professional elitism.

“Those with more privilege, platform, and resources can use that access and power to uplift the work done by those marginalized, excluded, erased, and exploited, even in supposedly progressive and radical community spaces and movement work. And if you’re not directly impacted, then give time, space, and money to those who are.”

Financial resources are undoubtedly crucial, but they’re not a substitute for the inclusion and representation of marginalized people. That’s why, as Brown notes, hiring leadership from within an impacted group is so important: it achieves both the economic empowerment of said leadership, and a guarantee that your product, event, policy, or organization will be shaped by someone with intimate knowledge of the subject matter at hand.

“If you’re invited to a conference on prison policy, make sure that formerly and currently incarcerated people have helped lead the content and programming, and are featured as speakers or trainers for pay,” says Brown. “If you’re organizing a march or demonstration, make sure you maximize accessibility for people with physical and mental disabilities. If you’re hosting a teach-in or training on legislative lobbying visits and all the speakers are white, heterosexual, cisgender, or nondisabled, you need to revamp your program.”

Finally, Brown explains, a viable alternative to hiring (should you need one) is redistributing wealth to people with disabilities and supporting their work through grants or donations to community-led organizations. Brown will continue to do just that by partnering with the Autism Women's Network and other collaborators on their anthology, All the Weight of Our Dreams: On Living Racialized Autism, as well as using funds from their 2018 American Association of People with Disabilities' Paul G. Hearne Leadership Award to benefit autistic people of color. And, of course, they’ll continue pushing for legislative and regulatory changes, and helping to create informal community support systems.

“This is work that I began nearly a decade ago,” says Brown. “I will not stop for as long as there is a possibility that policy change could lead to at least some harm reduction, and material benefit to anyone directly impacted by harmful policies and practices.”

Additional people, organizations, fundraisers, and media resources recommended by the activists featured in this article:

Aurora Levins Morales, Cyrée Jarelle Johnson, Disability Justice Collective, Eddie K. Ndopu, Eli Clare, The Icarus Project (Mad Maps), Jay Toole, Jen Deerinwater, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Mia Mingus, Michón Neal, Miss Major’s Monthly Giving Circle, Patty Berne and Leroy F. Moore, Jr. of Sins Invalid (SI’s 10 Principles of Disability Justice), Power Not Pity Podcast, Prerna Lal, Se'mana Thompson, Trans Justice Funding Project

Nora Whelan is a writer, editor, and shoot producer covering style and body image. Her work has been published in The Village Voice, Racked, New York Magazine, BuzzFeed, Playboy, and elsewhere.

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