Part Three: The Badass Disabled LGBTQ+ Women History Forgot
If you listen to some people nowadays, to be anything other than heterosexual is a new phenomenon. “Back in the day”, they’ll say “People weren’t gay. They didn’t have same-sex partners, or come out as trans. It’s all just the modern world going mad”.
If you do listen to those people, I bet you’d also believe that all disabled people were abandoned at birth, that we never survived infancy, that we were locked away and spent most of our years in institutions. Well, sadly, that was sometimes the case, but just as there were women who loved women, men who loved men, and members of the trans community all throughout history, so, too, were there successful disabled women.
Sometimes (whisper it), these identities even overlapped. Don’t believe me? Then take a look at the badass queer, trans, and pioneering disabled women the history books forgot.
Edith Cooper (1862–1913)
Edith Cooper was a disabled lesbian writer who co-wrote with her partner, Katharine Bradley, under the pseudonym Michael Field. The two women lived together for over 40 years, and when Edith became severely disabled by rheumatism, Katherine was her main carer.
Writing under one name became their way of declaring their ‘inseparable oneness’, and together they…
