Cobrahelp: Stand up for disabled queers

According to research done in America and Europe almost 1 out of every 6 people will be in a wheelchair at some point in their lives. That makes them the largest minority group in the world. In the last year we at Cobrahelp and Cobragay had conversations with quite a few queers in wheelchairs and that brought us to the realization that these members of our family need our special attention. There is no need to tell you how difficult the queer life could be but let us consider the life of a disabled queer for a moment.
After you made peace with the fact that you were gay your next move was to make contact with other queer folk right? Maybe you did not know where to find them but eventually you got to meet a few. Off cause in today’s world it isn’t that difficult anymore. The internet and especially social media made it so much easier to get in touch with other like minded people. Connecting to queer folk on facebook isn’t difficult at all. In fact, it is rather difficult to avoid queer friends by the time you have a few. We all developed a new kind of gaydar to aid us in our social media experience. In my case, with a few thousand gay friends, I do not need to look for more acquaintances; they come to me. Even serious closet cases know how to gather a few hundred gay friends. You just have to look at the number of mutual friends and your new computerized gaydar rings a bell. Finding other like you is so simple in our day and age, easier than ever. New babies in our family are normally from the younger people and they know even more about the virtual world we dwell in. If you want to meet a few friends in your hometown or district it is just as easy; you merely have to go through a few friends lists of likeminded people and set your filter on “search by current city”; nothing to it really. Contacting, reaching out, getting to know better, and sifting through weirdoes and sickoes is just as easy and before you know it you have a group of friends. Yes there are serious risks as the recent events in Welkom taught us, but as long as you keep to the rules of safe internet dating you should be okay; in any case as safe as all other forms of dating can be.
These relative easy steps are somewhat more complicated for disabled folks. Maybe you might have an extremely extroverted personality and have the guts to post a status like “all disabled queers contact me”, but most people are far too cautious for such a bold move. It is more likely that you will go through all the steps above until you get to the”when do we meet in person phase”. Then you will start to tell your next possible catch about your disability. I am not speculating here; our disabled clients tell us that is mostly as far as it goes. After they spill their guts they do not hear from the person again. How many rejections like that will you be able to take? I for one will hardly survive more than two of those.
If the above scenario is not enough to brake down your hopes for a future companion there are more than enough other obstacles as well. Most of us know how difficult it is to come out to your family and most of us are but too familiar with the reactions you get. Luckily friends and family can be as negative as they wish, but they can not stop you to meet the people that you want to meet. How will it change your situation if they could stop you and if you did need them to go where you want to go? Many of our clients complain that family members do not only react negatively about their sexual preferences but they also refuse to take them to queer venues. Where parents of disabled folks would be more than willing to take their kids to friends or lovers they are now sabotaging their kid’s chances to meet the people of their choice.
Another problem is the fact that your chances of finding someone who would be interested in you are even less than disabled straight people or queer folks. Let us accept the possibility that only queer disabled people would be interested in queer disabled people; off course it isn’t always the case. Statistics shows that 1 out of 6 people are disabled and it shows that only 1 out of twenty people are queer. That means that only 1 out of 120 people are queer and disabled. If it only were that easy that would have been okay but if you are a disabled gay man only 1 out of a thousand people will also be a gay and disabled man. There are not many of us with 5000 facebook friends but even if you had them you would only have 5 friends that understood your situation completely and it’s quite possible that your five friends would be scattered among the five continents of our world.
So there you have only three obstacles that a disabled queer might have on his path to meet a lover. Remember that people in wheelchairs are the largest minority group in the world. That means that their situation is even better than the situation that other disabled queers might have. So boys and girls who is going to take the responsibility to help the disabled queers in our little family? Their straight family and friends are not going to help them; it comes down to you and me.
Remember that only 15% of people in wheelchairs were born disabled. That means 85% of them were able to walk like you and I can. You could be the next queer in this situation. One out of six is very strong odds. It is not that unlikely that you could be our next queer disabled client. So how are we going to help them? How are we going to help ourselves? Maybe we should start by posting a status like: “All disabled queers contact me”. Let’s do the bold thing for them; let’s get these people together.

This Week's Cobrabite

by Dr. Brand Doubell

You can read more Cobrabites by Drr. Andrew Blade and Brand Doubell or many of the other splendit articles by Corneil Oberholzer, Benjamin Bredenkamp and others on:

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