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queermatters · 11 months

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On being queer and neurodivergent: Isolation and marginalisation

I'm an autistic, non binary pansexual in my mid 20s, and I'm beginning to come out in all aspects of my life.

One of the things I was really looking forward to with "completely" coming out, was not having to hold back from building community. I was excited to enter queer spaces as me, and not having to worry about keeping it secret or hiding the before or after. But most of all, I was looking forward to building queer community.

When I discovered I was queer, from the outside looking in, I saw all these queer people with incredible friendships and relationships. I longed for those deep, loving connection. That deep sense of camaraderie and solidarity between people. The physical affection, mutual understanding, empathy and love.

But I've very quickly found that gaining those sorts of connections isn't quite as straight forward as you might think. As an autistic introverted person (with many other parts of the ND experience), I experience a lot of compound discrimination. I experience constant exclusion and lack of care and understanding in my university course, spending my spoons battling to get an equal and fair education. By the time I've had to deal with the ableism, the day to day exhaustion of being in an NT world as an ND person, and the general hostile environment for queer folk at the moment, I'm left with little energy to push myself to socialise.

To make it worse, accessing queer spaces as an introverted and neurodivergent person has been a challenge. Many of them are geared toward cis people, many revolve around drinking. Even trying to find my way in less "club like" spaces has not been straightforward and a lot of the time, I have felt excluded. Some spaces I've hung around in have had cliquey tendencies: all the quieter people gather in one corner of the room, with the louder people on the other side. To make things worse, neither side of the room seems to do a very good job of welcoming in a newer quiet person, to make them feel included, welcome and wanted in the space. Even more upsetting is who's been on the receiving end of such cliqueyness. Having spoken to a few people of color in these spaces, they've also felt the same, and it happens that a majority of those experiencing this behaviour in these spaces have been people of color.

This is particularly disappointing, because as queer people, we should know what its like to be excluded and marginalised, and we should be doing better to help those who are still finding their feet. This also has a further marginalising affect for those of us who experience compound discrimination. As a disabled transfemme, I've found this experience incredibly isolating. Being able to access IRL queer spaces is a vital tool for building strong support networks, to feel seen and to grow as a queer person. But unfortunately for me and many others, a lot of us feel cut off from our community.

This often leads those of us with those experiences to seek out connections elsewhere. Maybe we download a few dating apps to meet other queer people, be it in a romantic, sexual, platonic or a mixture of those contexts. On the one hand, meeting people online can be very accessible for those of us with low spoons, but on the other, it still poses an issue. Dating apps are famously fickle, and queer dating apps are generally no exception. Ghosting, no replies, limited matches depending on location, and one sided conversations all gradually gnaw away at morale and self esteem, leading to feelings of further isolation and marginalisation within our own community.

Using apps requires constant and consistent effort (to navigate the fickle nature/behaviours that they encourage), even more so with a smaller queer dating pool. For disabled people, or those of us with compound discrimination, this can be a very draining experience.

One of the most important things when we're navigating the world as a baby queer is building and maintaining good support networks. I fear that there are many people, especially those of us with multiple marginalised identities, navigate the world without such support networks. Through therapy, I've found that one thing that would make coming out less scary is stronger and better queer support networks. And here in lies the issue: the marginalised in our community can often experience inaccessible routes to coming out, or at the very least, roads to coming out which are fraught with isolation, pain and desolateness.

I'm being tenacious, I'm on many apps, I've been talking with my online friends about my profiles and getting feedback on them (mostly good, aside from maybe getting more full body shots!), and I continue to swipe, message and meet with people. Its taking a lot of time and effort (and self esteem hits, if we're being honest!), but I'm very very slowly starting to find new and cool people to connect with.

My experiences have been eye opening. Despite what a welcoming and inclusive community we can be, I've seen from both my perspective and others, how we ourselves are capable of leaving those of us behind with compounding issues. It hurts, because I want to have a flourishing love life, I want a fulfilling and nutritious social life with people who understand and accept me. But sometimes that feels so far out of reach, and I fear that many others with the same, differing or a mixture of marginalised identities experience the same or even worse.

Either way, for those of us experiencing this: I see you and I hope that you can find your special people soon. You don't have to feel hope, but please keep trying, we all deserve to have people we feel safe, secure and loved around.

#trans #transgender #queer #coming out #non binary #enby #gay #lgbt #lgbtq #lgbtqia #pride #lgbtq community #queer community #neurodivergent #actually autistic #autistic #bisexual #pansexual #transfemme

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