This short piece by Joan Nestle on disability/chronic illness and Lesbian Identity, and really reading between the lines, about how that informed her fem(me) identity, has been kicking around in my head for 6 months now. The letter was part of a broader issue talking about a NY based Lesbian illness support group and the critical impact having a support group to talk about how growing older and either gaining disabilities or seeing them worsen was an isolating experience for the members of this group. Her writing comes from a time when disabilities and chronic illnesses were even more stigmatized than they are now, and it makes me deeply grateful for every interaction from a friend, mutual, or random dykeblr user where I have been able to discuss or read others’ thoughts on what it means to be disabled, femme, and/or a lesbian. I remain deeply grateful for the knowledge that in sharing our experiences, none of us are alone in navigating the ways in which our conditions affect our lives.
Another Way to Be a Lesbian
As a Lesbian who came out pre-movement, I at first found illness devastating. I had lived at least ten years of my Lesbian life believing I was a freak, fighting the doctors who saw the extra hair on my face as a sign of deviance but I loved the physical disobedience that was my "perverted" sexual desire; I cherished my body as the warrior carrying my love, the true force that would not bow to the voices that labeled me obscene and while at times I was swayed by the power of their promised hells, my body would always lead me back to honest wetness. And then at age 38, something went wrong, and once again I was back in the hands of the doctors, again as a freak but this time as a Medical Problem. My body does not do all the things I need it to do; it sends out messages I cannot understand but they terrify me. Now I must carry it with the strength it gave me at an earlier time, with the courage the old times bred in me. I am forty now and I am learning another way to be a Lesbian, one that will allow moments of terror, dependency, fear and yet will keep alive in me the shout of untrammeled woman life.
Off Our Backs, May 1981, Vol. 11, No. 5, women with disabilities (May 1981), p. 10.
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