IN
A
RECENT
night
in
San
Francisco,
John
Killacky,
a
51-year-old
writer
and
video
artist,
attended
an
AIDS
benefit
with
his
partner,
Larry.
During
the
reception,
Killacky,
who
became
a
paraplegic
eight
years
ago
after
doctors
removed
a
benign
tumor
from
his
spinal
cord,
says
he
felt
invisible.
“People
leaned
over
me
in
my
wheelchair
and
asked
Larry,
‘How
is
he
feeling?’”
he
says.
“It’s
as
if
my
mind
wasn’t
there.”
As
a
gay
man
with
a
disability,
Killacky’s
experience
isn’t
unique.
He
and
other
gay
disabled
people
say
they
frequently
encounter
discrimination
within
both
the
gay
and
disability
communities.
To
bring
this
discrimination
to
light,
Killacky
and
Bob
Guter
co-edited
“Queer
Crips:
Disabled
Gay
Men
and
Their
Stories,”
which
was
published
earlier
this
year
by
Haworth
Press
and
recently
won
a
Lambda
Literary
Award
in
the
Non-fiction
Anthology
category.
Guter
says
disabled
people
appropriated
the
negative
word
“crip”
in
the
same
way
that
gay
people
adopt
“queer.”
“We
use
it
to
retain
our
identity
with
pride
rather
than
shame,”
he
says,
noting
that
crip
is
used
generically,
to
refer
to
people
with
all
types
of
disabilities.
“‘Disability’
is
more
of
a
medical
or
public
policy
term,”
Guter
says.
“‘Crip’
is
more
in-your-face.”
BEING
PROUD
OF
ONESELF
isn’t
always
easy
if
one
is
gay
and
disabled,
various
gay
people
with
disabilities
told
the
Blade.
Before
Killacky
became
disabled
at
age
43,
he
was
athletic.
“The
night
before
my
surgery,
I
went
running,”
he
says.
After
the
operation,
his
body
froze.
“I
got
a
whole
new
perspective
[from
having
a
disability].”
Killacky
says
gay
men
no
longer
felt
comfortable
around
him,
and
he
ran
up
against
homophobia
among
other
disabled
people.
“In
rehab,
all
of
the
material
on
sexuality
was
for
heterosexuals,”
he
says.
At
a
conference
for
artists
with
disabilities,
there
were
no
openly
gay
men
or
lesbians.
“A
paraplegic
comedienne
made
homophobic
jokes
at
the
event,”
Killacky
says.
Guter’s
disability
is
the
result
of
malformation
birth
defects.
When
he
was
six,
his
legs
were
amputated
below
his
knees.
Guter,
58,
says
that
he
has
known
that
he
is
gay
since
he
was
a
little
boy.
Coming
out
was
hard,
he
says,
but
coming
out
to
himself
as
a
person
with
a
disability
was
far
more
difficult.
“When
I’d
see
other
disabled
people,
I’d
be
reminded
of
what
I
hated
about
myself,”
he
says,
noting
that
the
non-disabled
world
confirmed
his
negative
self-image.
In
college,
he
fell
in
love
with
his
male
roommate.
He
asked
me,
‘Do
you
think
you’ll
ever
find
a
man
who’ll
sleep
with
you,’”
Guter
recalls.
He
describes
that
as
“the
challenge
that
mysteriously
engendered
hope.”
Somehow,
Guter
says
he
had
the
self-possession
to
tell
his
roommate:
“Yes.
If
I
can
find
the
right
man.”
Guter
began
to
identify
with
other
disabled
people
eight
years
ago.
“It
was
a
slow
process,”
he
says.
Today,
he
edits
a
Web
zine
—
“Bent:A
Journal
of
Crip
Gay
Voices”
at
www.Bentvoices.org.
“The
male
gay
sub-culture
is
about
looks,”
Guter
says.
“Gay
men
with
disabilities
don’t
fit
into
the
queer
image
of
beauty.
In
places
where
gay
men
congregate
…
for
erotic
connection
—
like
bars
—
we
quickly
get
the
impression
that
we
aren’t
welcome.”
D.C.
RESIDENT
BERRITA
“RENEE”
Parker,
57,
has
pulmonary
hypertension
and
degenerative
arthritis
and
uses
bottled
oxygen
and
an
electric
wheelchair.
“A
lot
of
social
events
aren’t
accessible
or
smoke
free,”
she
says.
“If
there’s
smoke
I’m
up
a
creek.”
Roberta
Goldberg,
a
38-year-old
lesbian
who
is
an
interpreter
for
deaf
people
in
Danbury,
Conn.,
says
lesbian
groups
sometimes
have
interpreters
or
wheelchair
ramps
at
community
events
such
as
meetings
or
music
festivals.
“They
feel
that
they’re
‘sensitive,’”
she
says.
“But
it’s
really,
‘We’ll
keep
you
at
arms
length.
We
won’t
date
you.’”
Susan
McDaniel
Stanley
a
lesbian
who
lives
in
Bowie,
Md.,finds
the
dating
world
to
be
an
unwelcoming
place.
Stanley’s
disability,
spinal
cerrellbum
degeneration,
was
diagnosed
in
1986.
Stanley,
44,
uses
a
rollator
—
a
walker
with
four
wheels
and
handbrakes
—
to
get
around.
She
says
lesbians
seem
frightened
of
dating
women
with
disabilities.
“They
think,
‘I
can’t
be
together
with
a
disabled
woman
because
I’d
have
to
take
care
of
her,’”
Stanley
says,
adding
that
this
fear
is
misguided.
“Having
a
disability
doesn’t
make
us
incompetent,”
she
says.
“We’re
not
going
to
ask
a
partner
to
be
our
nurse.”
Disabled
gay
women
or
“crips”
don’t
fit
“the
lesbian
model,”
says
Corbett
O’Toole,
who
operates
a
Web
site
at
www.disabledwomen.net
in
Albany,
Calif.
“The
lesbian
image
is
of
a
woman
who
can
work
and
support
her
lover,”
says
O’Toole,
who
has
had
a
physical
disability
since
age
1
and
uses
a
wheelchair.
If
you’re
disabled
it’s
hard
to
be
seen
as
sexual,
she
says,
no
matter
how
out
you
are.
“If
I’m
in
a
bookstore,
lesbians
would
just
think
I
needed
help
getting
a
book
from
a
shelf,”
O’Toole
says.
“They
wouldn’t
ask
me
to
have
coffee.”
THERE
ARE
CULTURAL
differences
in
the
ways
in
which
gay
men
and
lesbians
with
some
disabilities
relate
to
the
gay
community,
observers
say.
For
example,
many
hearing
men
make
references
to
movies
and
music,
says
Raymond
...
