The LGBTQ+ community has a lot more in common than just our genders and sexualities. While these details of our experience are important, focusing on them alone overlooks the compounding oppressions that many of us face. That's why disability rights activist D'Arcee Charington Neal believes in aligning ourselves based around what makes us distinct from mainstream society.
“We put the lens of sexuality front and center because [some] believe that is what binds us together, when I think it’s more of [our] non-normativity and how we are a very powerful, very large outlier of human society,” says Neal, stressing how this more expansive lens allows us to organize against other forms of marginalization, including ableism.
Roughly 3-5 million LGBTQ+ Americans live with one or more disabilities, including two in five trans adults and nearly 40% of lesbian women, according to a 2019 report by the Movement Advancement Project. Given these statistics, there’s no excusing the continued inaccessibility of LGBTQ+ spaces and events. These concerning realities were on full display over the last couple of years; with the return of in-person Pride celebrations, disability rights activists pointed out yet again difficulties mobility aid users faced in attending, a lack of ASL translators, and the dearth of events that require masks.
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Beyond the ways that contemporary society remains inaccessible to people with disabilities, another issue queer and trans disability rights organizers cite is the centering of cis, straight, white men in general messaging around disability rights. Too often, when people think of organizers who’ve made our society more accessible, they think of Justin Dart, commonly known as “Father of the ADA,” or Ed Roberts, considered the “Father of the Independent Living Movement.” While both men fought for important rights for people with disabilities, there is so much more to the movement. And so this Disability Pride month, we're highlighting the work of 7 queer and trans activists, academics, creators, and artists whose collective struggle deconstructs ableism every day of the year.
Queer, disabled, multidisciplinary artist and abolitionist Asha (she/her) is an educator and child of the East African Desi diaspora. Asha currently lives in the Bay Area in California, where she’s taught in public schools for the last 10 years. In addition to her work as an educator, Asha is an internationally recognized poet. Her book Not Your Masi’s Generation is intended as a healing text for those who live with mental health disorders while facing generational trauma.
In both her poetry and pedagogy, Asha strives to highlight the cultures of disabled queer and trans folks of the East African and South Asian diaspora. “Representation is not enough,” she tells Them. “In resisting a capitalist culture and embracing ancient and ancestral ideas, we can reclaim the magic and power that our sacred bodies hold.”
Asha knows the stakes of this reclamation personally. After a suicide attempt, the poet learned first-hand the lack of culturally inclusive care on offer in mainstream American health care — an awakening that led her to write Not Your Masi’s Generation.
“I realized that the practitioners did not consider how chronic illness and disability impact mental health,” Asha explains. “The reasons that had brought me to the facility were not validated in the clinics. I searched for some kind of resource that intersected conventional [cognitive behavioral; therapy and dialectical behavior therapy] practices with ancestral traditions, all while addressing the stigmas experienced by folks across different generations and backgrounds. I never found it, so I created it.”
Ben-Oni (any/all pronouns) is a neuroindigenous, queer, trans-pangender community organizer currently residing in the land of the Tongva people (Los Angeles). The goal of their work is to create spaces where people can bring their entire selves and be acknowledged as such. Ben-Oni holds a masters in Autism Spectrum Disorders and is currently pursuing a Clinical Psychology doctorate at Saybrook University. They also coach a local youth basketball team and work with WNBGAY, a community of queer and trans ballers in L.A.
In 2020, during the peak of the pandemic, Ben-Oni founded Black Neurodiversity, an Instagram resource page that provides eye-opening historical analyses, along with practical strategies for creating more accessible spaces.
When asked about the inspiration for their organizing, Ben-Oni cites their ancestry, particularly their great-great grandfather, Reverend Richard Henry Boyd, who learned to read at 20 and built a publishing company that is still in business today.
“I practice ancestral worship, and I am eternally and infinitely inspired by my ancestors. So much so that it led me to develop a new term I coined, ‘neuroindigenous,’” they tell Them. “To be neuroindigenous is to be neurodistinct and in conversation with, admiration of, and respect for one's indigenous and ancestral ways of knowing and being.”
Makeup artist, writer, model, and public speaker Umber Ghauri (they/them) knows firsthand how difficult it can be to feel desirable when living with one or more disabilities. That’s why the artist uses their skill as a makeup artist to help affirm QTPOC folks, particularly those living with disabilities.
“When you're disabled, and South Asian and queer, in Britain, it's difficult to feel like expressing yourself matters,” Ghauri tells Them. “You feel invisible a lot of the time.”
Working with makeup to transform one’s appearance can help combat those experiences of invisibility. What helps even more, Ghauri notes, is transforming the reflection of one’s “disability” into a unique and personal style.
“Even when I've had issues like my hands going numb from neuropathy, I can still gamify it,” Ghauri adds. “Even if I can't really do winged eyeliner, what I am going to do is different, and I'm always trying to do something different.”
Ghauri also mentions how doing makeup with their disabilities allows them to be creative, and that creativity can be healing: “[Makeup] is play as well, which makes you feel connected to yourself.”
Karli Drew (she/they), a.k.a. “KarLeia,” is a freelance writer, activist, and wheelchair user. At 16-years-old, they started writing professionally. Now she works as a copywriter, copy editor, and disability inclusion specialist.
In Drew’s eyes, the main way that able-bodied folks can show up as allies for those living with disabilities is to first recognize just how pervasive ableism is in the world.
“Social action always starts with the acknowledgment of inequities. So, I think the natural first step to action is recognizing the prevalence of disabled people in society and the ways in which we’re actively excluded from, well, everything,” Drew tells Them. “Ignoring our existence won’t make us disappear, but it certainly makes it easier for non-disabled people to forget how much work still needs to be done.”
Corin Parsons (he/him) is a disabled, queer, trans man and academic. In addition to studying disability in higher education, the advocate is known for his social media presence, where he tweets about how the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic or the overturning of Roe v. Wade specifically impact people with disabilities.
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For Parsons, it’s important to continue drawing attention to the acute implications of the pandemic on people with disabilities, a project that’s especially pressing in light of society’s current hunger to move beyond the memories of lockdown.
“COVID-19 has been a more urgent issue for disabled people, and particularly BIPOC, queer/trans, and poor disabled people. This is not just because many of us have conditions that contribute to an elevated risk of severe illness or death, but also because disabled people generally have fewer resources at our disposal, so any crisis will hit our community harder,” says Parsons. “There should be consensus around working together to protect the most vulnerable in situations such as this, but the response to the pandemic has been moving steadily in the opposite direction.”
D'Arcee Charington Neal (he/they) is an award-winning activist, academic, and consultant. They are currently pursuing a PhD at Ohio State University, where they’re focusing on Afrofuturism, disability theory, and digital media.
When it comes to disability justice, Neal points out the ways ableism intersects with racism and fatphobia, especially when it comes to the politics of desire. “Let’s keep it 100%: If you’ve got a six pack and a face like Nyle DiMarco, some men are more than willing to pull out a cell phone and overlook that,” Neal tells Them. “Being in a wheelchair? I could have the body of Adonis. But people will still say ‘errrrmmmm, I dunno….’”
They continue, “And I’m still Black, and bring with that identity all of its peculiarities. I don’t have the ability to highlight one identity over the other in the name of ease, which has always been one of the problems that the queer community in general rarely considers.”
Doctoral candidate Farrah Garland (they/them) is an educator and disability rights advocate. Asked about the depiction of people with disabilities in the media, Garland emphasizes the importance of authentic representation.
“When we see ourselves represented in the media, [it’s essential that] we aren’t portrayed by abled actors pretending to be disabled, stealing jobs out from under disabled actors already struggling to find work,” they say.
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Just as important, Garland stresses, is making sure people with disabilities are in positions to make top-line decisions.
“Even the most well-meaning, highly-educated abled folk will never really know what we need or how to best create accessible spaces without direct input and guidance from actual disabled people,” Garland adds. “Disabled folx belong everywhere, decisions are being made, everywhere bodies are seen, everywhere people are.”
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