Persecuted, outlawed, imprisoned, shunned. You might think this refers only to the LGBTQ+ community, but their experience is remarkably closely aligned to the experience of the Disabled community. 

This book examines the histories of these two movements are they ran alongside each other often intersecting. Both the Disabled and the LGBTQ+ movements have rich and intriguing pasts that date back beyond recorded history. As Holder explores the journey of these movements the journey highlights their shared history through the stories of the people who brought both into modern consciousness. They represent vital landmarks in the little-explored intersections between the two groups’ past and present. 

Turn-of-the-century Mexican bisexual painter, Frida Kahlo, was Disabled by both polio and injury; Michelangelo turned his artistic talents toward homoerotic poetry to manage his arthritis. The iconic Marsha P Johnson lived with and cared for those with AIDs, and Dr Fryer, the psychiatrist with depression, has been credited with planting the seed that led to the removal of homosexuality from the American diagnostic manual of mental disorders. While many of these events seem small, they shape our Queer and Disability cultures and shared history, to show just how far we've come and how far we still have to go.

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• A Note on Language
• Frida Kahlo: ‘The main character in her own mythology’
• Marsha P. Johnson: ‘The fairies were not supposed to riot’
• Kitty Cone: ‘Their goals were unfeasible and their lifestyles improper’
• Connie Panzarino: ‘Trached dykes eat pussy without coming up for air’
• Sharon Kowalski & Karen Thompson: ‘Sharon chose her family, but the judge didn’t agree.’
• Lord Byron: ‘Such a strange melange of good and evil’
• Alan Turing: ‘A rather painful interest for a young man’
• Barbara Jordan: ‘As cozy as a piledriver’
• Dr John Fryer: ‘You may take this as a declaration of war’
• Harriet Martineau: ‘Frightened on beholding the human face’
• Bobbie Lea Bennet: ‘None of us are looking to make this thing sensational’
• Michelangelo: ‘Weep, you girls, my penis has given you up’
• Acknowledgements
• Bibliography