20. I'm Coming Out / Sian Jones

I’m coming out… / Sian Jones

I've got to show the world All that I want to be And all my abilities There's so much more to me

…. And I just feel so good Every time I hear

I'm coming out I want the world to know I got to let it show

Bernard Edwards / Nile Rodgers (1980), sung by Diana Ross

Image description: Close up of wall hanging made in rainbow colour changing yarn, showing unevenness of stitching

Pride month is a joy. A riot of colour and enthusiasm and hope for a brighter future. And, of course, it’s followed directly by Disability Pride Month.

For much of my adulthood, I’ve never quite known which bit of my identity to “come out” with first. And whether people were secondguessing…whispering….wondering. Online, my dis/ability is invisible –my queerness with my Zoom background not so much. In the physical world, with an unusual gait, and feminine appearance, the reverse is true. And for ages, there seemed to be very little representation of the intersection on which I find myself.

Increasingly, in subtle ways, like the lyrics above, and in not-so subtle ways through charities like ParaPride, Disabled Queer and Here and Regard this is feeling less like the case. At the start of Pride month, in Edinburgh I attended Pride for All – a delightful celebration of what it is to be disabled and queer.

I crocheted this piece to try to represent that intersection of queerness and dis/ability – close inspection reveals an imperfect symmetry in the star (just as my body is perfectly unsymmetrical) crafted in the colour changing rainbow coloured yarn.

Here’s to much more queer disabled representation in the world to come.

Image description: Wall hanging showing 12-pointed crocheted star in colour changing rainbow yarn