Falling into gayness: discovering queer community as a person with a disability

I have thought a lot about a constructive role for persons with disabilities within the Canadian urban gay community. I have spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy, which is about as sexy for a gay man as it sounds. Just as gay people are constructed as outside straight nature, I am somehow beyond gay nature. The tension within my personality between my intellectual aspirations and bodily constraints creates an interesting place from which to begin helpful critique and dialogue. And I think my answer, partial though it may be, can act as a bridge to build dialogue with HIV-positive people and trans individuals, both of which, though in their different contexts, struggle with issues of legitimacy within the gay community.

When communities function well, every member within that community thinks about how to bring experiences he has had to that community, even as he also learns from others. I was a member of a program for gay youth who want to be sexual health leaders in the community. After the program had officially ended for the day — thereby releasing the organization of any legal liability — we decided to go out for drinks. Foolishly, I was paying attention to one of the group members more than  driving my wheelchair — among other things — because we were talking about teen romance fiction; and so, I drove off the sidewalk, overturning my chair, and getting a few scrapes. I was easily righted, and while I was horrified at showing stupidity and vulnerability to a group in which I had an uncertain place, they were equally horrified for my well-being.

Characteristically, the two group leaders embodied two necessary components of an effective reaction, and this is not to say that either of them do not have the other part. While the first one seemed to feel more pain than I did and hugged me, the other person immediately and rationally cleaned the scrapes. And I took great pains to deny that there was a problem, since I have a complex about being “an imposition” to begin with. Despite my ridiculous protests, however, it did feel extraordinarily good, perhaps even life-changing, for other gay men to recognize that I was hurt; — the first one with more visible empathy, and the other, by calmly and methodically fixing the problem. And I obviously extended the concept of “hurt”.

A few days later, I was having drinks with another member, and I said, “I wasn’t even in that much pain… Okay… I’m lying; it hurt like a… But he [the first group leader] was so upset… I made him cry… That’s like kicking a puppy… I felt terrible… And you guys were already walking slow!”

“GIRL I KNOW; it is like kicking a puppy. And I understand how you feel about making people overtaxed, but you have to let people know if you’re hurt. I know not all people want to help you all of the time, but some do at least some of the time. You have to trust people’s good intentions: otherwise you’re not being honest with them or yourself!”!

This is really good advice, and, like most good advice, it is extremely hard to follow. But I think we should. Being gay, at least in part, means you learn to be tough, and being disabled and gay, unfortunately, means you have to be even more tough… Sometimes. But not all of the time. Prejudicial attitudes toward persons with disabilities, particularly in the gay community, are alive and painful, but I’m not going to dwell on the too much. Often, I am excluded just as much on what people think, as I am by the barriers pose by what I think people are thinking. And I believe that sometimes my experience as being an anomaly within the gay community mirrors how many of us, myself included, sometimes relate to society as a whole. Pain is very real, and so too is vulnerability. Perhaps the most important interpersonal need human beings have, sadly lacking for many of us, is to be seen as valuable people, not in spite of but because of our differences. As I reflect on where I have been and where I want to go, as part of the broader discussion of where the community has been and where we want to go, it is important to think about pain as a possible source of strength, but only if we see healing as an everyday and ongoing practice.

Every person, and especially every gay man, has his own unique forms of trauma, which he deals with in his own way at his own pace. We need sensitivity, rationality, caring, aesthetic sensibilities, sexual expressiveness, resolve and many other qualities besides, if “the movement” is going to continue to transform society, as it has done in the past. Even as I myself repudiate what I have said by being a completely cruel, especially to women, and self-obsessed sassy queen on the regular, I think my disability combined with excessive pursuit of same-sex love, gives me a glimpse, however incomplete and temporary, of what many of us know already: the purpose of being gay — if one can even find one — is to explore  the infinite ways one can relate to other men as a man, emotionally, intellectually, erotically, physically, and to push these relationships to their limit; such that, for brief moments, the world becomes a bit more bearable than it was before.(Un)fortunately the relationships I seem to be best at, because of happenstance, are ones involving dependency and caring.

This is a simplistic generalization, but many gay men — including most definitely myself — have a lot of difficulty with this, in part, because of our trauma and gendered existence. I repeatedly heard “boys don’t cry,” when that’s all I wanted to do. This is also the case for the current generation of young gay men who didn’t have to face the immediacy of the early HIV-AIDS crisis. I’m not saying that caring is the supreme value; sometimes I hate it. But if my very limited experience as a gay disabled man has taught me anything, it  is that caring must and often does exist as an important value alongside others which we cultivate, particularly as part of an oppressed group.

Despite being constantly under suspicion, in my heart of hearts I know that I belong in the gay community because just as a sassy bitch exists inside of me, a disabled person is a big part of every Homo and every human being. Gay men do get hurt; at some point gay men do have performance issues and body image problems, and they do die. The only way I think life is worthwhile, however, is if one is willing to fall from time to time and have others, ideally, of course, young gay men, pick one up when this happens. Perhaps this is one of the very many valuable lessons contemporary gay culture can appropriate from Christianity. But, curse the gods again, not all of us are attractive. We are perpetually working on this problem, nonetheless, for better and for worse.!