Gears for Queers

In this first full length episode we talk to Abigail and Lilith who are better known as 'Gears for Queers'. They talk about their new book, detailing their first ever long distance cycle tour and more generally about their gender identity, sexuality, mental ill health and neurodiversity.
There's even some discussion about toilets, but not in the way you may think!!
Its a really honest and open discussion and I hope you enjoy.

You can find out more about'Gears for Queers' and how to buy their book from : www.gearsforqueers.co.uk
 

Transcript

Unknown: 0:36

Hi, and welcome to the simply equality podcast with myself Sarah Stephenson-Hunter. This is a brand new podcast in which I'm seeking to foreground the lived experiences of disabled and LGBT people. I've got a fantastic episode coming up for you. This is the first full episode and in a moment, we're going to be hearing from Abby and Lilith Cooper, they also go by the name of Gears for queers. It's a fantastic discussion about issues to do with neuro diversity, mental health, long distance cycling, chronic pain, and even to do with becoming parents. So in a moment, we'll get on to that. And I really hope you're going to enjoy because I had a fantastic time interviewing them. Before we get on to that, I just really want to thank those of you that have taken the time to listen and subscribe to this podcast, and particularly those that have given comments on the introductory episode. I'm just really grateful for those of you that have done that and have taken the time that have given feedback, give me ratings on Apple podcasts. Please, please, please keep doing it. Keep sharing the information. And just just really, really keep going because it's really great to hear your comments. But for now I'm going to stop my chit chat. And I'm going to hand it over to the main interview for this episode on the simply equality podcast, I'm really excited today to have with me Abby and Lily Cooper, who are better known as guests for queers. Hi, welcome. Now, I'm curious for careers to those people that don't know explain a bit about what that's about. So we we kind of wrote a book called guest requests, but the name came from our kind of original Instagram handle, because we post a lot of stuff, essentially about cycling and we left for a bit cycle tour together in 2016. And kind of taught and wrote about that, I guess. Yeah, it was all first ever cycle tool. And so the book is a lot about how we We dealt with been beginners going on long distance, sort of a cycle tour. So it's um, it's interesting. There's a lot of challenges a lot of good points as well, but mostly challenges I feel in the first book. So, for the non cyclists who are listening to this, you say you entered a big tour. I think that's a bit of an understatement. Can you just explain our first tour well, so we say a bit of tour, but then sometimes we compare it to some of the other tools that people have gone on and we're just like, it was so small, but we cycled the first tour from Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, basically south through Europe to finish up in Montpellier. So in the end, we cycled about 2000 kilometres over about 90 days. Yeah. And we were Yeah, that's quite that's quite a cycle. Yeah, we were carrying so we camped the whole way. So we would carry in kind of four panniers, each month of camping equipment and clothes. We carried everything we needed with us. Which is why we were quite slow. Yeah, lots of. But we followed these seeds excellent roots called the eurovelo. So they're sort of routes that criss cross Europe and we followed the Euro eurovelo 15, that runs along the Rhine River, which is a fantastic route, we'd really recommend it and then sort of went through Switzerland and then down in France along the Rhone River. And I'm gathering from the bit that I have been able to gather this this was your first big foray into long distance cycling. Absolutely. We were both complete beginners to cycle touring. And actually, before we left for the tour, have you been off your bike for like, what, eight years? Yeah, so I hadn't been on my bike except for commuting to and from work, which I only started doing for maybe a year prior to us going on the cycle tours. So before that, I've been eight years and it took a while to get back on my bike. I was lucky actually to have Lily He was a very confident cyclist because they've grown up in Cambridge. And obviously, Cambridge just got an excellent cycle culture. Um, so they taught me how to ride on roads and how to turn right, which I refused to do for the first three months of learning how to ride on the road, and got me back into it. And I think it got to a point in our lives where we had the opportunity to do something like this. And originally, I sort of thought, Oh, if we're going to travel, maybe we'll walk around Europe or Well, you know, interrail or something. And then he said, you know, what, why don't we Why don't we cycle and the more we looked it up, the more we thought, yeah, this could be really cool if we can do it. So yeah, but it was a very steep learning. Yeah, I love the way that I've obviously heard you on some other podcasts and and if you like, it comes to me that you should have subtitled your book, basically, almost in a way how not to do a long distance cycle. Don't mean that critical, but honestly, I think the whole point of it is that you You weren't into the whole gear, you have to have all the perfect prep and the way bikes and everything else. Now, I think what we, what we said a lot about the tour is that one of the ways we were really lucky was that we had, basically an indefinite amount of time. So lots of people go on tours, and they have to spend a lot of time kind of prepping and preparing and being really strict about their itinerary. And being kind of ready in terms of gear and in terms of training. But we didn't have to do that, because we knew we had as long as we need it. So we were sort of like, well, we're not going to do this unless we just leave and then we'll figure out how to do it on the way because I hit training with her I just got so caught up in the anxiety of it and feeling like we were never gonna be ready. That I think, in fact, just leaving and then being like, right now we have to do it. Yeah, that's probably the best approach for us. Yeah, that's fantastic. So obviously, this this part caste is about disability and LGBT issues of people that intersect, and you both quite perfectly fit that mould, which I know is a melt. That's probably not really a mould because there's that many different shapes and sizes of it. But I know you're quite honest and you're talking about sort of physical and mental health issues perhaps to begin with, could you talk me through a bit about your own experiences of disability and and in hell, ill health? Yeah. So I'll talk a bit about me and then Abby, yeah, talk about your experiences. So it took me a little while to figure out like how I understand my experiences or how my brain works, but I now kind of identify as neurodivergent and then that neuro divergence, which basically means that my brain doesn't necessarily work in the way that lots of other people's brain works means that I also experienced some mental health challenges. Those mental health challenges are related partly to the ways that the world isn't built to accommodate how my brain works. And they're also related to just coping with kind of various things, that kind of neuro divergence makes difficult. So I had quite significant experience in mental health services and psychiatric services when basically from the age of about 17. And I was in and out of hospital law. I had contact with the criminal justice system. So I was in and out of probation services a lot, and kind of the world and my life is very chaotic, basically, up until well, I was discharged from hospital maybe for the last time about four months before we first met in 2014. And when we left for the tour, which was 2000, the first tour which was 2016 I really, you know, I'd been discharged from mental health services maybe a year earlier. I finished kind of seeing probation services like three months before. And I was really just figuring out the living more independently, and the ways that my brain worked and the things that I needed to be kind of well, in the world, I guess. Um, so the kind of writing about the tool was a lot a lot about talking about and I think it's interesting because people always comment that like, we're very honest about kind of mental health in the book. But I think it would have been very hard to write the book without talking about it, because so much of the tour was characterised by kind of learning how to be in the world. Like, I'd spent more time in hospital that I had living away from my hometown, living away from my mom's house even when we left. So it was, for me so much the tool was about navigating kind of mental health and disability in neurodiversity. Um, how was that when you were away from home? It was really hard at times, I'm really grateful that, um, me and Abby are a really good team. And we push and challenge each other, but we also take care of each other. And hair is written into the fabric of our relationship in a multi directional way. It's not a case of like one of us is the carer and one of us is the person receiving care, but it's just in the fabric of it. But I I called my mom pretty much every day or chatting with her. And I also, you know, hats her hat to us a lot of the things that I learned, kind of prior in terms of coping strategies and figuring out where my boundaries are my limits though. And, you know, I don't think it's too much of a spoiler to say that the toward kind of ended a bit earlier than we planned, essentially, because I was like this. This is my very real impractical limit, and I need that something other than constantly being on the move to feel well, and to feel like the better version of myself right now. But again, it's it's no spoiler, but I do gather there's quite a few tears in the book so much last time when we when we first wrote the book and sent the first draft and I just got back to us and was like, You don't seem very happy on this tour. I don't want to do another on and we had to go back and sort of write in the bits where of course we were happy for a lot of the tour. It's just I think the thing that sticks in your mind often other times when you were sobbing on a bench next to the Rhine, and that's why it features Yeah, so I think we both do just cry a lot in public generally. Yeah. Like when you're just like stressed lunches, you're just like, oh, okay, I'm gonna have a massive cry. Yeah. What about you? lillith? Sorry, do you mean me Sorry. Yes, sorry. So I'm in a similar way, I think that it's been a bit of a journey as well, sort of learning. But I also am neurodivergent. And I think when we talk about this book, we often forget that actually, this is a realisation. It's only happened in maybe the past two or so. Yes. So actually framing the book. With us talking about some of the experiences we have, we can go back now and be like, Oh, this makes so much more sense now that we understand the way our brains work. But at the time, that was just sort of the reality we were living and we didn't really understand why we react, reacting in certain ways and doing certain things but yeah, and so in a similar way to Lily like that has affected my mental health in the past, although not quite as seriously as Lily and I also have a couple of sort of physical things I still don't classes disability, said ridiculous because I've had chronic migraines since I was two years. Old and they still stop me from being able to they could be horrible they can Yeah, yeah and I often get them for spells of like three months where I get them for like four days a week and I can't do anything so I'm always very loath to say that it's a disability and I don't know why I think I haven't unpacked that yet but realistically they they do stop me from doing a lot of the things I want to do. And on top of that, I talk a lot about my my bowel issues in the book, which is also I think, where many people say the honesty comes from because there's a lot of me on desperately needing the toilet by the river. I have just been listening to pay I've just been listening to a video with you sort of with the bookshop in Glasgow and I think you do make that point about your your toilet habits and the free but you know, that's that that's all part of it, isn't it? I think the whole idea of what is a disability. That's fabulous. Technical, medical, social definitions. But I think for me, it's anything that impacts on your life to an extent that, you know, can be debilitating or cause a barrier. Yeah, absolutely. And I think when it comes to actually when we think about what what was challenging on the tool where there were barriers coming from the tool, if I think about what affected us most day to day, it was whether there was a toilet accessible for you IV because like not having toilets, accessible, them not beat them off. They were often urinals. they've not been unlocked. You know, all of those sorts of things is a massive, it has a massive impact when you want to be outside. Yeah, and actually recently, obviously, with toilets, public toilets been shut a lot during lockdown and coded. It's been really difficult planning going outside or doing any long distance cycling. We haven't done anything because I've been so scared that if I desperately need to leave, where am I? Where am I going to go? I can't just pop into a pub and Nobody's there. They say, wow. So, obviously, and I know we're talking about these bits separate, but we'll get on to how they interact in a bit. But so so the queres bit, I, again, queres is one of those words that obviously, I'm guessing you guys are sort of using the word and in a positive reclaiming kind of way, which is fantastic. But in terms of your queer identities, queer experiences, could you just both talk with you how you sort of interact with that personally? I think, could you go first, so smelly and I'll go first. So I identify so for me like figuring out my, I guess my sexuality came first but was really challenging because none of the ways that kind of queer people or people in the LGBTQ community around me were describing themselves with any sense to me. And I think that was really entwined with that I hadn't kind of figured out my relationship to gender. So I kind of start we started going out in 2014. And it was my first, I guess, was the the relationship by which I kind of came formally out to everyone except I didn't really come out. I was just like, this is my girlfriend. Yeah, luckily, I have a very like chill, family and like supportive friends. So that was just like, perfectly natural and normal to do. And then I think during the course of our relationship, as I began to kind of settle in to this notion of being queer. I also started to think about how that might apply to my gender or my experience. agenda. I think before? Well, I mean, I think before we started going out, I definitely was considered, I'd watched that, that channel for show that has since had a lot of like discussion around it rightly so, um, which was cool. Like, I think it was my transexual summer. And I remember watching that and just thinking like, there is something there for me. But I don't know what it is because none of these narratives quite fit. And it was only really, as people as I started to come into contact with notions of being non binary, in part because that was something that participants and that show later started talking about and writing about really well and publicly that I started to think actually, like, there's something going on with my expense agenda, but it's not. It's not that I think I'm the wrong gender. It's that I don't have this internal experience of it at all. And I kind of came across the notion of An agent and I was like, Oh, well, that that really fits me because it feels like people are asking me to describe or relate to something that just isn't there. Um, and exploring that has sort of just been like a very, like, gradual process of figuring out like, what's comfortable to me and what makes me happy and what makes me feel seen. And I kind of liked the work were in that context, because I come across kind of queer theory in an academic sense in my undergraduate degree. And I'd liked this idea that it was about kind of challenging binaries or like that it was an action to queer something. And I was like, well, that really fits with what I feel like. My kind of relationship to gender and sexuality is because it's not a kind of fixed thing. It's a thing that kind of happens and is fluid and is a process I guess, which is why I stick and kind of, if I'm if I'm given the option If I was to describe both my sexuality and my gender, I would choose Queer as the blanket term for both of them. Yeah, I think for me, in many ways, it was I think I had a much more sort of straightforward relationship, especially to my sexuality. Like, I came out as bisexual when I was 14. And for me, it was this wonderful realisation that the reason I wanted to kiss girls actually had a name and that it was just because I was by and that was easy. And I felt I felt happy that I've sort of discovered this about myself. Which is strange when I think about it. No, because I grew up in like, quite conservative community know, my family weren't conservative, but I was in like rural Norfolk and went to like a school full of farmers and I feel like maybe that's not the sort of place where you just come out as like the only gay in school but no one it was it was fine. But then I think like, I think as you I think for me, queer is a better term for my sexuality as well, in the sense that I think it, I don't know, it's hard. I feel like I haven't thought about this as much. And I think that's because it did feel very straightforward. And certainly up until maybe a year ago, I'd never considered myself anything other than cisgender. I know woman and that wasn't because I was particularly attached to the idea of being a woman, it's just that it never felt wrong. It just sort of was like that's, that's what people see me as, and that's what I've always thought of. That's fine, whatever, you know, and it's only in the past year or so when I sort of started thinking more about my own gender that I've sort of realised that you know, they then pronouns work. I'm just as comfortable with those, if not a bit more comfortable with those sometimes and I haven't, I'm still in the process of figuring out my agenda. Even though I'm happy with songs, she has Still, yeah, I don't really know. Yeah, I think I think it's just been a kind of a process of exploring. Well, I think like, maybe like purchase. And yeah, that means and like, I think that was maybe that's kind of an assumption sometimes that purchase means like, a butch lesbian. But actually like, Britishness is much more complex in terms of like, gender identity, gender expression, like being gender non conforming, and like exploring that as an identity. Yeah, and certainly wouldn't consider myself fan like, I'm definitely more on the mask side in terms of how I want to present and how I do present. And I think I think it's still something that you know, ask me again, in a couple of years, I'm probably going to have a completely different answer to you and I, I don't know how it's going to go. But I think it's interesting and important to ask those questions and explore that. Because it is isn't a fixed thing in the way that I think I think I always assumed as a child and growing up even into an as an adult, I was just like, well, this is easy. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna stick with it, you know. And I think it's interesting because like you often say that, like, our conversations about my gender identity have prompted like that, those kind of discussions around chores as well. But I think also at the same time, like, I think, if I was to say, if there was like one profound difference between me and Abby, it's that Abby doesn't mind. I kind of actively enjoys being seen as different. And I have a paralysing fear of it, and spend most of my childhood and early adolescence, desperately trying to appear the same as my peers constantly all the time. Yeah. And that drives so much of who I was and how I was and the things I put energy into. And I feel like being with you, has been really liberating for me because I've leaned into feeling some difference and like what that can look like Like how that can, like be quite freeing. Yeah, and I guess Quinn is different. That's like that's like where it seems to fit so well because it's just, it's almost a term for just being like, we're different. And don't you can't pin it down. And I quite like that in a way. Fascinating as well as of course, you've been interviewed here by applied person. So opposite, although this resume, I've got the video and I've got no idea of what you both look like. So it was just really fascinating. You're talking about presentation and you know, looking more masculine than feminine, whatever that means. But But, you know, it's been a it's just a really interesting discussion and exploration, isn't it? Absolutely. And I feel like it's something that I touch on certainly in the book is how sometimes I felt like the desire to be cyproterone. And to be kind of out in nature was about this desire not to be seen and to be read by strangers, but I feel like it's very Easy to look at someone's body or someone's presentation and make a series of assumptions that are then, like intensely kind of misgendering or just like sort of a war of attrition, where you're just like, really aware of how your internal experiences don't correlate how people are treating you or responding to you and stuff. So I think that that is a really interesting like, and it's really interesting with cycling gear because obviously, I don't know what you guys are like in terms of what sort of cycling gear you have, but a lot of that is quite sort of gender neutral. Yeah, I think um, there's obviously still that kind of classic. I'm super into makeup. Yeah, yeah. I like pattern and all sorts of things and obviously, like it, it I always appreciate when, when people are talking about their cycling kit and they talk about it in terms of fear as opposed to university assumptions are kind of standardised, you know, male and female bodies, which really can be jarring. But I do like I mean, I was looking through some photos of the tour earlier and thinking about like, how freeing it was to just like, be wearing this like, ramshackle combination of like hiking and camping and cycling gear and really not having to kind of worry about that because it was all intensely practical and not about appearing a certain way or being read a certain way it was just about like what was comfortable on the road. Yeah, some of the clothes we wear on cycle tours I I like freak out about where I wouldn't wear them to the supermarket or out in town when I might usually but I'm happy to just you know go out wherever I go. When I'm when I'm on a tour. It's always gives me an excuse to be like, Oh, of course I am dressed like a sort of hiker cyclists like dirty disgusting. If you paint the picture, you do paint quite a bit deadline lockdown really for some of us this past few. Yeah, genuinely when lockdown started, like, literally a weekend I was just like, right, we're taking all the trials that require buttoning up and they go into the suitcase. And we've just been living in like, leggings by them that kind of relates to like, the kind of disability and neurodiversity side of things as well because like, like sensory things is like a big thing for both of us. And both of us have this constant balance where it's about wearing things that are like, comfortable in a sensory capacity, but also like presentable in like the work sphere or like walking down the street. And it feels like a bit of a balancing act and and also like in terms of like being gendered. Um, like, I'll tend to avoid wearing things like explicitly read as like feminine clothing, even when I want to, and I went and I dress a lot more femme at home, I would say than I do ever going out, because there's this constant balance between being like I want to wear what I want to wear. Yep, I don't wanna have to deal with the constant like I think you're always much more comfortable in like what traditionally be better spent clothing than I am as well which I've always found quite interesting like you always wore dresses in a way that I would like I refuse to wear dresses and I will never wear a dress your dress dresses I saw almost like an elaborate drag in a way I was like this is my one chance to wear a wedding dress and getting that like super frilly like crazy huge wedding dress. So I'm gonna take it and I'm going to run with it because like, when else am I going to get a chance an excuse to do this which is why I was so keen on on wearing a dress for my wedding day. So in terms of your experiences being both disabled and queer, LGBT I mean, what? What comes to mind when you think about that? What's your experiences of navigating those intersecting identities? I have two thoughts. One that's positive and one that's kind of not so positive. So I think for for me, because I'm my kind of experience of like neurodiversity and disability and mental health led to a lot of contact with mental health services, and often in voluntary contact. I was, I think that was part of the reason why I pushed down my queerness and didn't really explore my gender and sexuality until I left until I was kind of properly discharged. Because I really wanted to resist this feeling that it was going to be another thing about me that was like problematized or medicalized, or that they could take ownership of The kind of narrative of, so I feel like that there wasn't space for me to express that. And, you know, I spent a fair bit of time on specific kind of female wards, which was always uncomfortable. And I also think, though, that my experience really was shaped by like, how my gender was read. So like, the fact that I was read as a woman meant that I was diagnosed with things that I think I wouldn't have been diagnosed with, if I'd been read as male or being acknowledged as being not either. Um, and yeah, I feel like that was that's really shaped, then how or like my journey through queerness and coming to understand that, and then I think on kind of, like, the more positive side of things. I, I see quite a strong link between my neurodiversity and my queerness because I think and I think there's there's a lot evidence that kind of that's a shared thing within the neuro diverse community. And I think so I think for me, like celebrating both of them as positives and celebrating both of them as differences, and the ways that it kind of allows you to question those assumptions and opens up new ways of talking and thinking about things. It's like, a profoundly like, good experience for me, and makes me feel really lucky that like, I get to be like, they get to be non binary, just I'm just like, it's so cool that like, you can things like, I'm not, I don't feel that I get to be creative about it. And I get to be like, explore it. And I've got this whole world to think about and all these different ways to think about myself. Yeah. Excellent. That's fantastic. What about you? I think I was just thinking about this, I was thinking a lot, a lot of my experiences when I think revolve around being sort of dismissed by doctors, because of, because of my gender, I think dismissed. And I think like a perfect example is, um, so I had chronic gallstone problems for about six months and I was sort of in constant pain. And we went to the doctor quite early on and we said, Look, we think like, we think he has gallstones, like can we get a scan and see and he was like, No, no, no, that's not likely. You know, she's too young. It's it's not something that happens like here's some other medication and like, go away and we went back like it. It continued on and the pain is still there. And about a month later, I ended up in a&e after a lot of like, I went to the doctors, the doctor told me to go back home my phone 111111 told me to wait and I finally ended up in a&e after a weekend of being in this instance. incredible pain. And when I got to a&e and I got to the, um, what's it called? triage triage. She asked me how much pain you're in, and I said, probably a nine out of 10 because I do it out of 10. And she told me, you couldn't possibly be in that much pain you'd like you don't look in that much pain. which point I said, Well, well, my boobs turned white. And I like that's why I came to a&e because I hear that's not a great thing. And she said, No, no way. You're definitely not in that much pain. You definitely don't have liver failure, which is what that would be don't have jaundice. At which point I finally get sent. And turns out my liver is failing because I've got a blocked bile duct and all of this and I think I can compare it to a few months ago, my younger brother was in very similar pain and a very similar area of his stomach. And after a while, he started vomiting and I was like, right, I'm looking after my nice phone. 111 iPhone 111 They referred him instantly to the hospital. He got seen within 15 minutes and it was kidney stone. So he was obviously in a lot of pain, but compared to what I had to experience, it just made me furious. absolutely furious. Yeah. And that's, I mean, aside from like, personal stories, there's so much evidence about like, how doctors and stuff assess pain, especially weight times their abdominal pain. Yeah, between women and men is just, well, people who are seen as women or people who have seen this man, it's just insanely different thinking about like medicine and ways that like disability and queerness intersect. It is actually just a thought that came to me when you were talking was that like, so we want to have kids together. And adoption isn't possible because I have a significant criminal record and that's a big barrier to adoption. And we're hoping to start fostering as a job when we can afford a place with a second room. But obviously wants to have like biological children. And we've been exploring kind of options for this and what this would look like. And but I think it's interesting how like, and it's something we talked a bit about in the book is that like, we sort of felt like, so before we left for the tour, I'd been receiving ESA, which is like employment support allowance. And that was based on kind of my mental health diagnoses. And that allowed me to work 16 hours a week at the cafe where I'd worked for the last five years, and then spend the rest of the time while I was studying at the zoo, but also it just gave me room to kind of look after my mental health and scale up and kind of like find ways to cope and better ways to live. And it was really foundational to us being able to live independently, and to me learning kind of like all those skills and navigating that and we forfeited that in order to go away because Obviously, when you leave the country, you know, that can play that as a benefit, you know, understandably. But also, when, when we came back, I knew that I wasn't, if I needed it, I wasn't gonna be able to get it. Because if you've been away for a period of time, then you're not entitled to it. And we kind of made a conscious decision to do that, because we felt like I was at a stage in kind of my kind of recovery from the mental health stuff, that that was feasible. But then we also felt like when we were on the tour, it was almost like, This shouldn't this isn't the kind of activity that should be being facilitated. Like if, if people invested that time and energy and in me recovering, I should be using that energy to work or to do activities that they decided were the ones for me to do. It was almost like we had to earn the privilege to go travelling. And I feel like sometimes we do feel like we have to prove ourselves more and earn the rights to do things that other people can do and take for granted. And I feel like I'm in terms of various aspects of our lives, including the kind of neuro diversity thing. Like we've kind of sometimes avoided pursuing diagnoses of things because that can be a barrier. And I also like, even now, I think when I'm struggling a lot, I've struggled quite a bit in lockdown with my mental health, which I think a lot of people have, I will not go back to mental health services because for me, having been discharged from mental health services for five years is something I can say definitively. That stops that from being a barrier. And that's not a good thing. I'm not saying that that's the way to do it. But I think like proving wellness, proving that I'm capable of like, being responsible for a child, for example, proving that I'm like, safe to be around and proven that I can like have a job, working with vulnerable people, all of those sorts of things. Like, that's not something that I think you necessarily have to do. If you're not disabled, I think it's not really something you have to do if you're not queer and having to look at alternative ways of like having children. Yeah. And I feel like that's a big area where like, we feel the impact on our lives because we're having to do all this extra thinking and figuring out and like, you always find it odd that I keep every letter ever sent about anything. But I do it because I never know when someone's gonna ask me to prove something. Yeah. And asked to see the paperwork or the records, because they have so many experiences across my life of people being like, actually, we need proof of this. I actually need to show you need to show this. And it's been useful having the infinite box of letters to dig through to find it. I feel like that's the place in medicine, whatever it also I think that old word for disability infinite or infinite I think is quite quite pertinent isn't it? There's famous kind of sense of people feeling that you like fidgety suddenly feel disabled. And I feel like people are already asking us like, are you like people? I don't think people would ask the same questions of like, couple who preconceive with just the two of them. In terms of Are you ready to be a parent? And I don't think people would ask the same questions of a non disabled couple in terms of like, are you ready to be a parent? Yeah. But this assumption because we do other things, unconventionally, like in terms of how we work, we both work out of configuration where we both work part time because that's the best configuration for us. That then feeds into this assumption that like, we're not going to be able to look after a baby. Yeah. Which we definitely like, How hard can that be? See that's that's focusing on the sort of medical world which is obviously you know, a big part of it, but what about your have experiences of the sort of disability in LGBT community be that socially and the both involved in sort of zillions and arts and veganism and that you're quite involved in them. from them and even Scotland, Wales, Scotland. So we're in Kakadu, which is just north of Edinburgh on the Fife coast. Yes, I have been. I have been. I'm from Northumberland originally. So I do know a little bit of Scotland, but But yeah, what's what's been your experiences more generally? I think I've been the Xen world, the art world, the whiteboards could benefit from being more assessable. Always, I mean, in lots of different ways, that don't just relate to kind of the ways that were disabled. I think there's been some really positive I think moves within the queer community to look at creating more accessible faces. So from our perspective, like that's things like less kind of ambient noise or like background music, or things like events that have like quiet spaces, or that's easy to toy. Yeah. Yeah. And it's certainly been positive like, increasingly when we apply to table at scene fairs. The way that accessibility info is like really detailed and the ways that it becomes easier and easier to talk about, like what your needs are. And I think like, I don't know, I feel like one of the kind of positive up swims in the last five years or so has been that it's increasingly normal to talk about, like what you need to be in a space and that's okay. And I'm not saying that that's like, it's, it's all fixed and you can just say what you need and I'll do it to you. But I think like there's a growing culture around like articulating needs and accommodating you means and stuff like that. That's I mean, neither of us were big on going out, I would say, our bid on going out. But when when we do or when we have when we bid cytoskeletal space, it's often been because it's one of those more kind of like radical alternative spaces. It's offering something that that is enjoyable. I yeah. I was going to say as well, I think, for me, the Xen community has been quite empowering in finding the language I need to express who I am as well, I think there were likely it says it's, there's still a lot of work to be done. And it's by no means, you know, the most inclusive or a perfect space, but there's a lot. There's a lot of radical voices that are there and they express things that perhaps I had never been able to express or felt comfortable expressing and suddenly feel empowered to do so because of that relationship with the zinc community in the arts community. Yeah, I think ziens Oh, space that are built for kind of intersecting identities. Um, I think unlike, you know, I think I think one of the challenges around like mainstream media is that it often demands that you be one thing or the other. So in any conversation with mainstream media, we can either talk about queerness or we can talk about mental health, or we can talk about fatness, or we can talk about disability. Yeah, we're not allowed to, like, cover everything because that is just overwhelming for the audience. This how to cope is such a variety of different things. really having so many different aspects to yourselves. I know too many dimensions. But I feel like jeans are beautifully placed to encompass all the different dimensions of people and they're also really like, positive kind of fluid spaces that don't demand kind of fixed identities and that allow you to kind of change I think one of the things we both found really difficult, but I think especially me found difficult about writing the book was that it kind of set in stone, one version of the story of the tool. And one way of understanding it. And it was kind of like Abby was saying that like in the process of writing a book, we've also found new and better ways of understanding and talking about our experiences. And it's odd reading back in the book and being like, Oh, this is the fixed. This is the fixed account of what happened, this cannon. But there's all these kind of like, other things. Like different things happens and what were ziens allow for multiple retellings at the same event, and the book demands just one. One telling of the story. Yeah. Which is absolute to get into scenes because that's been my problem. I have a blind person going through the scenes, but we can talk about another time, but I know you've been because obviously, I think we should definitely have a chat about that because you've been We'd be looking at like, the week because I think digital teams have become a lot more prevalent over lockdown. And there's lots of ways to make digital scenes more accessible that people don't necessarily do because people are learning as they go. So like standardising digital scenes would be like, yeah, be great. Yeah. It's different things become important to you at different times as well. Like, there are times where I feel like very strongly about, like, queerness will be an agenda. And there are times when that kind of fades into the background. And it's odd. Like it being like, fix what's the important things about you in that in that context? Like I definitely feel like with lockdown, I was reflecting on this actually the other day, that like, I was very like chill and not very, not not very open. But like, for me my thing. I think often when it when you're having conversations about being non binary or being trans For me, there's this kind of way off of like, Is it worth it? Do I get more out of this conversation that I'm putting in? So if I'm asking, or if I'm kind of talking about my gender identity or asking for particular pronouns, then like, Am I gonna get that? And is it worth putting the energy in to get that? And I think before the book came out in the fall lockdown, I was very, like, pragmatic about that. So I had like, a close network of friends who are great at like, like, respecting my gender identity and using the right pronouns, and they're just like, right, and the majority of the queer, and then I had, like, my family who are all kind of aware of it and, and are working really hard to actually I would like to, like, validate that because I really appreciated the work that's been put in there and I've really seen it and felt it. But you know, I didn't have those conversations at work with like, wider groups of friends. It wasn't really something that I would emerge I would do the work in because it just felt like more effort than I was going to get out of it. And then of course, the book is set in stone, the fact that I use gender neutral pronouns, and I'm non binary. And that's led to like different people reaching out to have conversations about it. But I also think like without the, without the reassurance of like, physical queer community around me, and the ways that they validate me and make me feel seen, I felt much more keenly being misgendered online, and in messages and stuff that I would normally Yeah, and it's become a lot more important to me, because that's kind of the only place that I exist. Otherwise. I feel like I wonder how my home alone The only place I exist in public is like on the computer. So it actually matters if people use the right pronouns, whereas before I feel like it didn't. Yeah, I guess that's a whole other podcast series, isn't it? Quick queer experiences of lockdown My gosh. So many different stuff. I love it. I love it. It It's one of the issues I have with this podcast. So how do you how do you pin things down? But while I'm aware of time, you guys have given a lot of time? And is there anything specific you would like to say, from your perspectives to the LGBT and disability communities about what they could do better and what they could learn what you guys have learned from your experiences, perhaps one or two things? I mean, I don't think I have anything specific. I think I'd probably just say how, like, how happy we were to be asked to do the podcasts and how grateful we are, that you're kind of making space for these conversations, which they think like, if, if certain of LGBT plus community and disabled communities can do anything, it's make space and have kind of complicated nuanced conversations. And I think only good things can come off those. Those so yeah, yeah. coolness of anything else in wrapping up just a few genuinely Actually, yes. Where can people find out more about you guys your boot jerseys? Ah, yes, I got one of the time was terrible. And so on Instagram and Twitter where apps gets the quiz, and then what Our website is www gives quiz.co.uk. And that's where you can also buy the book directly from us. Otherwise, the book is available sort of in all the usual places. But we do like to sort of suggest people go to their local book shops because they're struggling at the moment. And I think it's great to go to the independent book shops if you want to, if you can, and if you want to get the book. Yeah, any other promo? So there you have it. I hope you'll agree that was really really, really fascinating interview. Little bit of information for you, myself. My wife Claire, we do like going out on our tandem. But we haven't done anything like that yet, but you never know a time may come. So they are that's the end of this first full episode of the podcast. I hope you've enjoyed it. If you have and you haven't done so already, please do go subscribe in Apple podcasts. It's also on Spotify. You can also go to my website, www dot simply equality.com if you want to get in touch then the best way is probably to send an email. That's info at simply equality.com Thanks for listening and I'll be back soon with another episode. Take care Bye