Andrew Gurza’s book Notes from a Queer Cripple: How to Cultivate Queer Disabled Joy (and Be Hot While Doing It!) is part memoir, part self-help guide for the disabled.Supplied
The Globe and Mail’s Accessibility Profiles by Graham Isador feature conversations highlighting disabled artists, creators and community leaders.
Andrew Gurza wants to make you uncomfortable.
It’s a major component of their newest work, Notes from a Queer Cripple: How to Cultivate Queer Disabled Joy (and Be Hot While Doing It!). Part memoir, part self-help guide for the disabled, the book unpacks Gurza’s sex life – the good, the bad and the often hilarious – with unflinching honesty, offering readers insight into the day-to-day realities of life with severe access needs.
Born with cerebral palsy, the award-winning disability consultant, writer and activist wanted to share a perspective rarely seen in the media. Through personal anecdotes and playful narration, Gurza emphasizes that they have wants, desires and needs just like everyone else. Getting those needs met often requires a bit more effort and thought than most people are used to.
Recently The Globe talked to the author about their book, awkward conversations and how to address ableism.
You’ve talked about how conversations around disability and sex, particularly queer sex, are basically non-existent. Is that why you decided to write this book?
I think people are afraid to hear about a disabled person being sexual. This book is about that. It’s also an urgent call for the queer community – specifically the queer male community – to do a lot better when it comes to ableism. I think they’re afraid to broach the idea that they’re not as inclusive as they say. Maybe they haven’t been willing to look at a disabled person in their space before. Someone saying I’m a sexual being, just like they are.
You call yourself a “queer cripple.” It’s also in your book title. That’s a term other people might take offence to. Why do you refer to yourself that way?
I use the phrase queer cripple quite intentionally. For me, they’re terms of reclamation. It’s a way of being like: you can’t hurt me, I’ve already used the most derogatory terms around disability and queerness that somebody could use. I know it’s gonna make people slightly squirm in their seats. Both words have a really dark past. They’re derogatory. They have shock value. I do it without irony. I do it because I know that it’s going to drum up conversation and make people pay attention.
Do you get a kick out of that shock value?
Yeah, it’s kind of fun. When I was a kid, my presence in a room would automatically make people uncomfortable. I could see them stiffen up. I could tell they weren’t sure how to navigate this person in a wheelchair who needed all this support. As I got older I started pushing back against the awkwardness. If you’re already going to feel uncomfortable, why don’t I deliberately make you uncomfortable to see what happens? But the hope is I can use that discomfort to start a conversation.
Where do you think that discomfort comes from?
It’s okay to be uncomfortable. I want to stress that. Most people don’t want to show that they’re uncomfortable, but when you encounter somebody with a disability – especially somebody with my level of disability, who needs help with pretty much everything – the uncomfortability comes to the surface. It’s fun to play with that but we also need bridges between the non-disabled and the disabled. I think people are just afraid because they haven’t been exposed to disability in their personal life. I believe as disabled people, we have to give them grace to feel that discomfort and help them move it through.
The book also talks about finding joy in disability. That’s really refreshing to me. Acknowledging the hardships while noting it isn’t always doom and gloom.
I walk a really kind of tight rope line between the humour and the serious stuff. I wanted it to be funny. I could have written a hugely academic, super dry, book about sex and disability. That would have been fine, but I needed to bring people into this experience. I wanted to give them a way in and the only way that I know how to do that is through stupid humour and trying to find brighter moments in addition to the hard stuff.
The book is a call for the queer community to do better. It’s a call for all of us to look for the disabled joy where we can – small wins, big wins, finding ways to enjoy your body – and to laugh a little bit about the inaccessibility of a disabled person just trying to have a sex life, and how awkward, absurd and ridiculous that can sometimes be.
