Intersections: Disability & Sexuality
INTRODuction I confess I had never really been much of a fan of zines. They seemed an irrelevant and edgy throwback to the 90s with little purpose today. But since being involved in their production my opinions have thankfully changed: the problem wasn’t the medium, it was the fact that the first zines I’d read had little to no relevance to me. I am disabled. The way I interact with my body & my sexuality is, for me at least, radically altered by this fact. In line with a neoliberal perception of disabled personhood, I feel my gender, sexuality and worth dissolve; my interactions with my body are stilted and to be avoided at all costs. Since reaching out on the subject of disability & sexuality, I have learned that I am not alone in struggling with this intersection. This zine exists as a space to explore and chronicle the interactions we have with our bodies in light of our disabilities & illnesses - mental, physical, or both. This intersection splinters further, to gender, race, body politics, class. As I was beginning to attempt to advertise this zine on multiple platforms I found it difficult to make it clear just how open it was to submissions from people with all kinds of bodies, minds, and experiences. When visualising what I wanted this zine to become I was flummoxed about how to go about actually collating and publishing it: I have no eye for detail, a complete inability to draw, have never been labelled anything close to “neat” and am possibly one of the most uncreative people you could ever come across. I harbour a deep envy for anyone who can, with little effort, make something look beautiful and artistic. So with this introduction also comes an apology: this is the first time I’ve ever used anything like InDesign. It’s also the first time I’ve ever tried to make anything ever, that wasn’t a picture of me riding a horse aged 3 or whatever. Creating in ways that aren’t writing was something I gave up almost before I even started school, out of shame. So I really and truly apologise for the mish-mash nature of this zine: it’s clearly attempting to be something it’s not. It’s an embarrassing mix of clean lines and more traditionally zine-type elements. But I must confess that part of my fear of zines did stem from the fact that many seemed to have gone out of their way to seem grungey and handmade. I’m curating a zine with disability as one of its major themes - if the text weren’t legible for the sake of a zine-y feel, I’d be doing the community a disgusting disservice - on top of the fact that I wouldn’t be able to do that even if I tried. With that awkward apology out of the way: I hope this collection of texts and images serves as a source of solidarity for you as it has for me. It has been a huge learning curve for me to both create the zine and experience each and every submission to it. My only regret is that I was not able to facilitate and support each and every disabled person who expressed the desire to submit something but was, in the end, unable to. - Jessica @smalltownmoon