Intersections in Identity–Identity Development among Queer Women with Disabilities

Abstract

Until recently the sexuality of individuals with disabilities has largely been ignored or incorrectly assumed to be non-existent. Individuals with disabilities have a range of sexual orientations encompassing both heterosexual and queer identities. In what ways do individuals with disabilities construct their sexual orientation identity? How do women who identify as both disabled and queer develop their multiple identities? Do current models of lesbian identity development or models of disability identity development address the reality of queer women with disabilities identity? This project involved interviews with five queer women with disabilities in the Northwest to understand their subjective experiences of their identity and the process of its development. Interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, and analyzed with Atlas.ti software. Both identity development models for disability and queer identity could be used to describe either women’s disability identity development or queer identity development. A combination of identity development models best fit these women’s life experiences.

Appendices

APPENDIX A INTERVIEW QUESTIONS*

• 1. What do you consider your disability to be?

• 2. When in your life did you begin to identify as having a disability?

• 3. When do you think doctors, friends, or family would have identified you as disabled?

• 4. What key moment(s) led up to your current identity as disabled?

• 5. How open are you to family, friends, and co-workers about your disability?

• 6. How do you currently identify your sexual orientation and/or gender identity?

• 7. When in your life did you begin to identify as your current sexual orientation/gender identity?

• 8. What key moment(s) in your life led up to your current sexual orientation identity?

• 9. How open are you to family, friends, medical personal, and co-workers about your sexual orientation?

• 10. How would you relate your sexual orientation and disability aspects of your identity?

• 11. What aspects of this identity do you especially enjoy?

• 12. In your interactions with other people in the GBLTQ community what do you see as their responses to your disability?

• 13. In your interactions with other people in the disability community what do you see as their responses to your sexual orientation?

• 14. Do you know many other people that are both GBLTQ and disabled?

• 15. Do you know of any groups that provide services or social events for those that are GBLTQ and disabled?

• 16. Do you know many other people that are both GBLTQ and disabled?

• 17. Do you think there needs to be more services for individuals that identify as GBLTQ and disabled?

*Not all questions were asked during every interview. However, all participants touched on most or all of these areas during the course of their interview. Questions 1–10 were specifically asked of all participants.

APPENDIX B INTERVIEW THEMES

The following themes were generated upon compiling key ideas from all of the women’s interviews.

• 1. “I didn’t know how to recognize danger”

• 2. “The community [disability. seems to be a little bit more open minded to the idea that there is not the perfect one here.”

• 3. “I’ve been coming out more as a disability advocate and activist”

• 4. “Balance of taking care of myself and also challenging myself”

• 5. “See how, how oppressive that framework is”

• 6. “Mainstream lesbian stuff because they are expensive”

• 7. “I’ve been in and out of the closet literally, in very drastic ways.”

• 8. “She [my counselor. became my mentor to me.”

• 9. “I see those things as being things both that make me very strong.”

• 10. “Disability I’m not too excited about it.”

• 11. “Disability and sexuality are like those are two things that are hardly talked about together or like much less disability and queerness”

• 12. “I can trace it back to being really young I can think of instances in first grade”

• 13. “I can express it more and that’s like a huge relief for me.”

• 14. “Amazingly a lot of them [family. are accepting./The way that my birth family has functioned has been with a lot of denial”

• 15. “I’m way more open with my friends then with my family.”

• 16. “My gender conditioning was very different”

• 17. “In many ways it was gradual.”

• 18. “To me that’s the hardest part, is um saying ya know can you do this for me?”

• 19. “I’m still sort of learning that relationship and unlearning the negative relationship.”

• 20. “I feel that one of the problems is that the stigma attached to depression”

• 21. “I, I don’t have contact with a community you would call a disability community”

• 22. “So there’s no area of my life where I am not out.”

• 23. “I do tend to umm equate the two in the sense of origins”

• 24. “I just thought I had to fit in with everybody else and I just hid a lot of the stuff.”

• 25. “I came out as a political lesbian.”

• 26. “I wish my queer brothers and sisters could be a little more mindful of things once in a while. /You’re definitely more likely to see accommodations provided at a lesbian event then say at a straight.”

• 27. “Really crystallized in the last year or two”

• 28. “I was so relieved, I just cried.”

• 29. “It’s one where endlessly limited on what I can do.”

• 30. “That was one of those things I never announce it at jobs but it always seems everybody figures it.”

• 31. Other identity related codes

• 32. Miscellaneous