Interview with Angela Stanley
At the Live Work Well Research Centre, we are committed to starting from the margins. We want to make space for voices and experiences that are often left out or seen as ‘less valuable.’ People with disabilities, and especially those occupying more than one marginalized social identity, are commonly on the margins. This has certainly been the case for LGBT+ people with disabilities. On this topic, we interviewed Angela Stanley, a PhD candidate in the Gender, Feminist and Women's Studies Department at York University, to learn more about her fascinating research and what she does to live and work well.
This year, Angela presented her research at the Sexuality Studies Association meeting during Congress. Her research pays attention to the intersection of race/culture, queerness and disability to better understand how people make sense of their intimate and sexual lives. Her paper, entitled “Race, Sex and Disability: Perceptions of beauty, sexuality and desirability for queer and disabled young people,” explores the experiences of queer young disabled people in forming intimate relationships, and how their experiences are shaped by race and culture. For her research, Angela interviewed people with disabilities in order to make space for them to share their experiences in their own words.
According to Angela, there are still many challenges for people with disabilities to form relationships. This includes stereotypes around disability. For example, the idea that people with disabilities are not interested in intimate relationships, or that they cannot be good partners. One of the most significant barriers, Angela says, is attitudes towards disability, which led her participants to think carefully about whether or not to disclose their disability to potential partners:
The notion of disclosure [of a disability] came up a lot. Especially in terms of, when do I do it? Am I doing something wrong by not doing it? It plays with society’s notion that questions if people with disabilities can ever be a good partner. Will bringing up disability make me less of a desirable partner? - Angela Stanley
It was also about a lack of access. Importantly, though, Angela talked about how access is more than simply building ramps, or being able to enter spaces. Accessibility cannot stop there! As she noted:
Access is largely conceived to be the ability to enter into a place, space, or to understand and obtain information. The interviewees’ view of access, however, referred to more than just being able to enter into a space or place but also the ability to remain within this space without fear of discomfort or abuse – Angela Stanley
Access is also about creating spaces that are welcoming and comfortable to people with disabilities. The loud music, crowded spaces, and physical obstacles are just a few of the barriers that may exclude people with disabilities. The “dating scene,” and “dating rituals” more generally, need a revamping: “The way that we meet people, the way we often go about dating, is not for folks dealing with anxiety, folks dealing with depression, it is not built for people with disability, it is built for non-disabled people.”
In her interviews with people with disabilities, Angela also found that financial constrains was a significant barrier for LGBT+ people with disabilities to form intimate relationships. It costs to go out! Think about the costs for watching a movie and having a dinner afterward. Certain “rituals of dating” can be inaccessible to people who have a low income. “If someone is on OSAP, working on a minimum wage, ODSP, Ontario Works, dating becomes something that is not on the front burner,” Angela said. She also noted that, sometimes, people with disabilities are told that they should prioritize finding jobs instead of forming intimate relationships. The idea is that landing a job and being a “productive member of society” is the most important for people with disabilities.
Finally, according to Angela, it is also about representation. Although we have seen more movies and TV shows with people with disabilities as characters and/or actors, representations of racialized and LGBT+ people remain rare:
I am often left looking for the spectre of the queer, disabled person of color. I know that we exist. I know that we have fulfilling intimate lives, but we do not seem to exist in the academic literature, books or the movies. Within the last decade movies and TV shows that portray a disabled character have overwhelmingly shown the character to be white. - Angela Stanley
As we switched our conversation to the question of what it means to live and work well, Angela spoke about the overwork and pressure that graduate students face. As a graduate student herself, she has faced a lot of pressure to “always be working.” She talked about the dangers behind this culture of glorifying overwork: “we need to move away from this notion that graduate school work needs to be this all-consuming enterprise, the idea that if you are not burned out by the end of the day you are not doing graduate school right.”
Graduate school, as she said, is only one part of life. To live and work well, people need to have access to more than just a good job. It is also about doing activities that excites us. It is about changing the pace of graduate school so students can maintain a more balanced life. In her case, for example, she finds nourishment in reading sci-fi and romantic novels.
Interested in learning more about this research area? The Centre has two research clusters exploring questions related to disability, gender, sexualities, inclusion, and exclusion. Check out their work at:
Angela Stanley is a PhD Candidate in the Gender, Feminist and Women's Studies Department at York University. She completed her Masters in Critical Disability Studies at York University, writing a major research paper on Disability and Sexuality: Perceptions of Beauty, Sexuality and Desirability for Queer, Disabled Youth.