Prairie Pride News Roundup: Disability Pride Month Edition

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Before you dive into the latest issue of the Prairie Pride News Roundup, we want to quickly remind you that the PCE's Annual General Meeting is taking place this Saturday, July 24.

All 2SLGBTQIA+ folks, allies, and supporters in Edmonton (and the greater area) are invited to join us from 1 - 4 pm (MST). Please register to receive the Zoom meeting link.

July is Disability Pride Month, and the Pride Centre of Edmonton team is busy exploring the intersectionality of disability and queerness (among our everyday operations), and the ways in which we can build safer, accessible spaces for our community members.

Firstly, if Disability Pride Month is new to you (like it is for us) here's a brief overview of how it came to be:

The first Disability Pride celebration was held in Boston, Massachusetts following the founding of the American with Disabilities Act (ADA) on July 26, 1990. A second celebration was held the following year, but did not continue for a third as the lead organizer, Diana Viets, passed away. In 1992, New York City held its first Disability Independence Day March, which continued until 1996. After an eight year gap, Disability Pride Parades began once more, this time in Chicago. In 2015, on the 25th anniversary of the ADA, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio declared July as Disability Pride Month. While not a nationally or internationally recognized commemoration, it is celebrated globally.

But as with any Pride celebration there are complicated feelings around Disability Pride Month. Some see it as an opportunity to focus on healing and self-love, while others as a means for corporations to further exploit people with disabilities.

J. Logan Smilges, an Assistant Professor of English at Texas Woman’s University, wrote about their feelings regarding Pride and Pride Disability Month recently for the Disability Visibility Project.

"[2S]LGBTQ Pride Month often reminds me that 'pride' is a privileged emotion because only some people are allowed access to the events, gatherings, and communities that celebrate it. By the time we reach the beginning of July, I rarely have the energy for Disability Pride Month. I exhaust so much time, so much care, and so much anger in June fighting for disability inclusion that, come the end of the month, I am absolutely spent."

Smilges is not the first or only disabled queer person to feel isolated by Pride. Historically, 2SLGBTQIA+ organizers and spaces have been extremely exclusionary of disabled folks.

In 1980, Gerald Hannon wrote an article for The Body Politics titled "No Sorrow, No Pity" that discussed the challenges that queer-identifying disabled people faced. In it, he said:

"But I feel that somehow, way at the back of our own closets, we have built another one, and into it we have shoved our gay deaf and our gay blind and our gay wheelchair cases, and we’ve gone on with the already difficult problems of living as gay people."

And this gatekeeping unfortunately persists in our contemporary moment. Trans folks, queers of colour, and disabled people have largely been left out of the conversation and celebration, dominated primarily by white, cis, able-bodied people.

As Umber Ghauri, who identifies as a Pakistani Muslim queer, disabled person, wrote in her 2018 article for The Independent.

"When you come out as [2S]LGBTQ+, you might experience isolation. Certain friends or family members begin distancing themselves from you, some might outright reject you. When you come out as disabled and [2S]LGBTQ+, the pool of people you share identities with becomes smaller, and you can experience more isolation, outside of the [2S]LGBTQ+ community, and within it."

So how do we as a community breakdown the barriers to participation?

We're glad you asked! Read more about advocacy, accessibility, and disabled joy below.

"I believe that everyone's liberation is all tied up together. And if we all work together...what's good for me is also good for you, and good for the global community as well," wrote Spencer West, a disabled and queer activist, for Men's Health.

West's words are a reminder that our identities and lived experiences cannot be separated or compartmentalized, try as we might. As Audre Lorde said, "there is no thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives." Lorde, among others, was not just a trailblazer for queer rights but fought for other communities and movements including disability justice.

Disability is also something that can happen to any person at any moment. According to the 2017 Canadian Survey on Disability, more than 6 million Canadians aged 15 and over (22% of the population) identify as having a disability. That number is most likely much higher in 2021.

"The fact is, most of us will move in and out of disability in our lifetimes, whether we do so through illness, an injury or merely the process of aging," wrote Rosemarie Garland-Thomson in 2016 for the New York Times.

So rather than fearing disability, or trying to manoeuvre our bodies and minds through hostile environments, we must advocate for better conditions. The first step is to learn more about the history of systemic discrimination against people with disabilities, and how classicism, racism, immigration, settler colonialism, saneism, and ableism intersect.

And then, start to educate yourself and others about the disability justice movement (which was closely tied to the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s) and the key issues. We shared a brief overview on our latest social media post.

Here are some of the articles and resources we found particularly insightful during our research:

If you have ever navigated the city while using mobility equipment or dealing with an injury (or pushing a stroller, carrying something heavy etc.), you have probably noticed curb cuts: the wedge cut into elevated curbs that allows for a smooth transition from sidewalk to street.

Curb cuts were originally designed to make public streets accessible for wheelchair uses, largely because of Ed Robert's insistence, who had been left paralyzed below the neck after contracting polio. Known as the curb cut effect, they are an example of how accessible design — also known as universal design — helps everyone, regardless of whether they have a disability or not. Closed captioning is another example of this.

"Originally meant to benefit Deaf people, [closed captioning] helps people who have trouble with auditory information processing, people who like talking during films, and people trying to watch TV in noisy bars," writes blogger Ozymandias.

Captions are one of many ways we can create safer, accessible spaces — both physical and virtual — for all members of our community. We recently shared a post on social media that shared 4 more methods but this work can't be summed up in a few slides or a single newsletter. We encourage everyone to continue learning with us by seeking out more resources and knowledge.

Some wonderful starting points are these guides from Rooted in Rights, Stonewall, The Body Is Not An Apology, and SPARC BC; the Disability After Dark podcast with Andrew Gurza (star of Picture This), and resource roundups from award-winning historian Dr. Jaipreet Virdi, which include a Deaf History series and a book and essay list.

While embarking on this work, we ask you to keep these words from Mia Mingus in mind, as our attitude towards disability also impacts whether or not a space is accessible:

“Access for the sake of access or inclusion is not necessarily liberatory, but access done in the service of love, justice, connection and community is liberatory and has the power to transform.”

While advocacy and accessibility are incredibly important, we must also remember to celebrate #DisabledJoy! Here is a non-exhaustive list to get you started.

Alexis Hillyard is a local queer and disabled YouTube creator, podcaster, mom, and self-taught vegan chef. Born without her left hand, Alexis uses her stump as a kitchen tool while expanding the vocabulary of what's possible inside and outside the kitchen on her award-winning show Stump Kitchen. Hillyard's work, aimed at empowering the queer, disabled community, has been featured in Allure magazine, on Google, and Wall of Chefs Canada!

Musician, actor, writer and performance artist Mat Fraser has curated a series of six shorts for the BCC, including his own. CripTales tackles modern-day issues of disability through fictional monologues, written by and starring people with various disabilities.

"What I would hope is that they find themselves dissatisfied with lesser portrayals of disability — with less authentic versions of what they know in their insides is the truth," Fraser said during an interview with PopSugar. "And to not put up with it."

Crip Camp is a feel-good documentary (available on Netflix) that recounts the highs of a Catskills summer camp and the community it fostered, which fed directly into the American disability rights movement of the '70s.

For anyone searching for a new podcast series, we recommend tuning into Crip Times — hosted by Yousef Kadoura, Kayla Besse, and Kristina McMullin, and created in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, as a means to maintain intimacy and connection amongst the disabled arts community. Featured on the podcast is Edmonton's own Cindy Baker, and Ryan O’Connell, creator, writer, and star of Netflix’s Special.

Crip Times is a project of Bodies in Translation, which hosts many other bodies of work that we encourage you to look through!

We know we just provided you with plenty of reading material, but here are a few more before we bid you adieu!

and for those active on social media, here are some Instagram accounts to follow to further your learning:

Check out Stump Kitchen on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram, and listen to more of Alexis on The Queer Moms U Wish U Had Podcast.

If you enjoyed this edition of the Prairie Pride News Roundup, please consider sharing with a friend or two. You can also donate to the Pride Centre of Edmonton (we'll also accept your recyclables through Skip the Depot!) to help us continue providing safe spaces, education, and resources for 2SLGBTQIA+ folks, allies, and supporters.

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