Image description: Screenshot from header of magazine article. The headline and byline, “‘Coming Out Disabled: Embracing our full spectrum’ by Victoria A. Brownworth,” are followed by a photo, taken outside in summer, of a short-haired white woman in a pale linen shirt sitting in front of another white woman with slightly longer hair, wearing in a sky blue tank top, who has her hands on the first woman’s shoulders; she is wearing a wedding ring (they are married).
In the Oct/Nov issue of Curve, Victoria Brownworth writes a three-page feature on disabled queer visibility. I’m one of three women—the others are Alice Wong and Ace Ratcliffe—interviewed.
It’s a good article; you should read it (either in the print edition or the $2.99 digital download). But one thing I want to correct immediately: I did not coin the phrase radical hospitality. I first heard it from Leigh Ann Hildebrand in 2013, and talked about it extensively here. I talk about it a bit more in the article. It’s a beautiful concept and in my opinion if everyone adopted it the world would be a better place.
I also also talk about my own internalised ableism and how and why it took me so long to first recognise it, and then begin to get past it:
While Ratcliffe was forced to accept and address her disability early, for Griffith the struggle took longer, but was no less harsh. “Perhaps because my physical impairments gained on me slowly, it took years to feel the sting of nondisabled people’s dismissal,” she says as she echoes Ratcliffe’s words. “It took years for me to begin to understand that I had been dismissing myself. But more likely it’s because growing up I hadn’t seen disabled queer women in real life, or on page or screen. At all. And then when finally I began to see disabled characters, they were distorted clichés: tragic cripples, angry cripples, helpless cripples. Cripples whose bodies, like those of queer people, were portrayed as sites of difficulty rather than delight. Cripples written by the nondisabled who have no fucking clue.”
The article ends:
Griffith’s call to action seems so simple, yet those of us who read coming out stories as teenagers know the path to inclusion is incredibly fraught. “We all need to see ourselves,” she says. “We need mirrors. We need to hear our own voices. Our strong, beautiful, ordinary, disabled, queer voices. We need to see and hear ourselves.
“Let’s find each other. Let’s welcome each other. Let’s practise radical hospitality. Next time you put together and article, or a party, or an event, reach out. Don’t say, ‘If you need anything, just ask.’ Do the work of imagining what we might need, and then make it happen. Don’t put the work on us. You can’t anticipate everything, but you can begin. And when we speak—on Twitter, in person, in a book—listen.”
Nicola Griffith 
Brilliant. Beautiful portrait.
Very best, Bruce
Powerful and beautiful, as always – thank you dear Nicola
“Cripples who are written by the nondisabled who have no fucking clue”.
So much THIS^!!!
Sadly, there’s dismissal within the disabled community towards the disabled as well. Some 30 years or so ago, when I was in college, a friend of mine approached a student organization I was in and asked for volunteers to work a conference he was running regarding disability. I volunteered to work the conference as opposed to attending. I was on crutches exclusively at that time. Several attendees in wheelchairs, on watching me help set up and tear down rooms and stock tables with literature, blew gaskets, one saying that my doing “menial labor” set a bad example and was demeaning. Silly me, I just thought I was folding and unfolding chairs. I’m sure there were able-bodied people who couldn’t believe I was managing to do the work. Fortunately, by that point I was so used to being dismissed by most of the world that I barely noticed. My friend told me about it later.
I’ll probably regret adding this, but here goes:
According to some, I was born with a “golden ticket”-I’m cis-het white male. My disability has been dismissed as not significant enough to offset my privilege. I was looking at a book (Accessing the Future) and almost bought it until I read the preface, in which it was stated that in the disability movement, as in other movements for broader acceptance, the people most likely to be taken more seriously are just those characteristics I possess. Except that the disabled are rarely taken seriously by anyone. Cis-het white males aren’t comfortable around me, probably because I remind them what could happen to them. I remind them of their own mortality and that can’t stand that. The forward continues by saying that the stories of those disabled who also belong to other oppressed groups must be prioritized.
Well, at least I wasn’t kicked off the bus entirely. I just have to move to the back. Nothing new there, sad to say. We’re a bit further from radical hospitality than is good for us, it seems. Or so it appears to a beaten up old gimp who started fighting battles more than half a century ago.
@Bruce: The photo is by Jennifer Durham, part of the series that includes this one and this.
@charisgrandma: Thank you. Victoria did a good job of coaxing it out of me :)
@robertreynolds66: As a disabled person I have no doubt you are often dismissed. I also have no doubt that, as you say, a disabled cis-het white male experiences less discrimination than, say, a disabled black trans woman. But that does not diminish your struggle as a disabled person in any way. Ableism in any flavour sucks.
Lovely!
It’s a beautiful picture of both of you.