To celebrate LGBT+ History Month in February, we’re shining a dazzling light on a local author who has recently published a very relevant book looking at Queer Disabled people through history, and the huge impact they’ve made on our lives which many of us may have no idea about…
Researcher, writer, archivist and historian Daisy Holder (pictured centre) has explored the often-overlooked connections between the Disability and LGBTQ+ movements in their new book Queer Disability through History: The Queer and Disabled Movements through their Personalities. Both communities have faced persecution, exclusion, and marginalisation throughout history, but their journeys have also been intertwined in surprising and profound ways.
This ground-breaking book delves into the shared experiences of these two groups, revealing how their histories have often run parallel to each other, sometimes converging in unexpected ways. From the disabled, bisexual painter Frida Kahlo to Michelangelo’s homoerotic poetry, the book highlights key figures and events that shaped both queer and disability cultures. The book also brings attention to unsung heroes, such as Dr. Fryer, whose work led to the removal of homosexuality from the American diagnostic manual, and Martha P. Johnson, a pioneering figure in both LGBTQ+ and AIDS activism.
Through these stories, Daisy sheds light on how both movements have influenced each other and how their shared past offers a glimpse into the future of both struggles. We caught up with Daisy to find out more…
What inspired you to follow the path of researching Disability history?
“I’ve considered myself Disabled since I was a teenager and studied history at university. I tried to research some Disabled history, because I knew we would have been around for all of time, but aside from the very recent history of activism and campaigning, there was none around.”
“There are of course some great academic historians doing research on disability history but a lot of it is on very specific subsets of history, it’s not been considered a specific type of history really, just a part of either medical or social history. A lot of Disabled people in history are never spoken of as Disabled, they’re just ‘someone who did something really cool and awesome. Oh, also they had this impairment’. They are never described as Disabled.”
“Naturally, part of this is because Disabled isn’t necessarily a word they had for themselves, but a lot of it is because the people who were writing these accounts didn’t want to see them as Disabled. It was something they thought would reflect on them badly.”
How did the idea for the book come about, and how do you feel about the final result?
“Half of it was coincidence. While I was researching, I slowly realised just how many of these Disabled figures that I was researching were also Queer. In a way it makes sense, today more Disabled people are Queer, and more Queer people are Disabled than in the general population, so why wouldn’t that also cross over to history?”
“It turns out that there are so many important moments in both Disabled and Queer histories that wouldn’t have happened, or at least not in the same way, without those people who were Queer and Disabled. Being Queer and Disabled myself, it’s great to have those people that weren’t an inconvenience for having both of those identities, they did amazing things and were so vital to the progression of both of those communities.”
Are there any Queer Disabled historical figures from Bristol and the surrounding area that you’d encourage readers to research more about?
“Harriet Martineau, who features in the book, is a major one. She wasn’t from Bristol, but she spent a lot of time here during her early years when she was particularly unwell, and loved it.”
What are you hoping readers can experience from your book?
“Hopefully they can have an interesting time and enjoy learning something new. It’s easy to see the Queer community as one thing and the Disabled community as another, and when people talk about intersectionality, it can make it sound really complicated and politically correct, when the reality is ‘sometimes someone who is gay is also Disabled’, which doesn’t sound all that weird. It’s the realisation that we’re everywhere (and not in a scary way).”
Queer Disability through History:
The Queer and Disabled Movements through their Personalities is out now, published by Pen & Sword History; pen-and-sword.co.uk
