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Digital Love: How Disabled Folks are Revolutionising Online Dating

In early 2020, the UK entered a lockdown to lower the transmission of Covid-19. During that time, people turned to their computers, phones, and tablets for socialising.

While a lot of people adapted their social life to the internet during that time, for a lot of folks digital hangouts weren’t actually new at all. Whether it’s because of disability, chronic illness, mental health, neurodivergence, or a combination thereof, the online space is often the most accessible option. This applies to dating and romance, too.

When you think of online dating, you might think of invasive messages from strangers or swiping through endless photos of men holding excessively large fish. Admittedly, there can be a lot of that. However, the online forum is also an incredible way to hold space for innovative and largely disability-friendly dating.

Digital dating happens over a wide range of different platforms. For example, Cher Snyder has moderated a Telegram dating group for those with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (M.E./CFS) since May 2021. She describes the group as being “like a dating app for M.E./CFS”. Cher tells me

“There’s a lot of people with M.E./CFS who are single and want connection, but don’t have the energy to date in traditional ways. We created this group so people with M.E./CFS who are looking for love, romance, and intimacy could find each other. We think of it like a ‘singles mixer’.”

It’s clear that there’s an immense need in the community for romance-specific spaces, with the group’s membership sometimes growing to just shy of 100 members. “It isn’t a support group since we ask people to leave the group when they are no longer single. We have other groups for long-term socialising community, where we can also interact as a group. I’ve seen it grow from 15 people and celebrated when people leave because they’ve fallen in love and committed to each other.” She says

The group specifically holds space for those who are single and left behind by other dating streams, online or otherwise.

Cher discusses certain barriers that can be faced when finding both connection and understanding when using mainstream dating apps: “Dating apps can be disappointing, because we have to wade through so many ‘healthy’ folks who don’t understand our limitations. (…) This is a way to connect people who are limited by energy deficits with each other.”

The group means that people can exist and have their needs met outside of restrictive, ableist structures.

“We see a lot of new members who feel really insecure about what they have to offer in a relationship. Our ideas of what makes a relationship ‘real’ are often based on able-bodied ideals.” Cher says “Learning to be a confident person and good partner, while accommodating our illness, takes time. It may mean that our relationship looks different from what we expected, but it can result in more rewarding relationships.” 

Ableist notions around the legitimacy of technology, or in fact the validity of anything that deviates from the norm, are difficult to escape in society.

Since starting to reckon with my own internalised ableism, confidence around offering a ‘real’ or ‘legitimate’ relationship in line with my access needs has been a real problem for me.

Despite these worries, some of my favourite dates have happened while exploring someone’s Animal Crossing town – and they certainly haven’t felt any less real in the moment.

Although bug hunting on Tortimer Island or questing in World of Warcraft are simulated, there is no reason for an online date to be simulacra.

While the comets falling over the island may be made of pixels, the connection made while gazing up at shooting stars together is very real.

My chronic illness got exponentially worse around three years ago. For me, that mostly looks like experiencing persistent low energy and fatigue. Those symptoms combined with the relaxing of Covid-19 measures in the UK means that I spend a lot of my time at home.

While this experience comes with a great deal to unlearn and an immense sense of grief, it also comes with a fantastic sense of creativity and change.

Disabled creativity means that my love life during this period has been innovative, fulfilling, and exciting. Change is immensely frightening to me thanks to my particular cocktail of neurodivergence. But, just because it’s frightening doesn’t mean that it’s actually bad.

If anything, these changes mean that I now strive towards relationships that fit negotiated needs instead of a perceived norm or standard. ‘Should’ isn’t a part of my vocabulary anymore.

When I think of the change I’ve experienced in these past three years, I think of the meaning of Death: the most infamously misunderstood Tarot card.

Pop culture leads us to believe that the card’s meaning is completely literal. In actuality, it represents the death of an old way of life. The way I dated before hasn’t died, so much as it’s changed. Dating is now shaped entirely around needs that are negotiated between myself and my partners. That change is completely welcome.

Through necessity, Disabled folks have always been innovators. In the Socratic dialogues, Plato wrote “our need will be the real creator”: where there is a need to be met, creativity and innovation will ensure that that need is met in its own way.

Disabled folks are experts in taking innovation into our own hands across all parts of our lives.

Why would romance be any different?

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How poetry helped me process growing up as neurodivergent

The Sims. Twilight. Vampire Diaries. WKD and other sugary alcopops. Sleepovers. The Sims, again.

I never thought the things that made up the background to my teenage life would some day fill my notebooks with aliveness, nostalgia and poetry.

In fact, I never thought you could write poetry about these things at all – besides, I was too busy and self-conscious to write poetry as a teenager, struggling every day to just get through school and survive.

But as an adult, poetry has given me the freedom to process, make sense of and even rethink my past experiences of growing up as a neurodivergent femme person in a hostile world.

Looking back on the difficulties I struggled with in a neurotypical society and the imaginary worlds that helped me get by in the real one, has allowed me to revisit my younger self with so much kindness and compassion. 

Writing through pop culture accompanied by the relative brevity of poetry has granted me ways into writing about painful experiences that feel manageable and cathartic.

Pop culture can be a segue into writing about something which might otherwise feel overwhelming.

In my more joyful poetry, this has allowed me the chance to rewrite much of what happens to young neurodivergent people, and give myself and the characters in my poems things that in reality might only be dreamed of.

People often assume that poetry is always autobiographical or confessional but there’s fiction in poetry too. In my notebooks, my imagination can run wild in support of a neurodivergent world.

Poetry has also let me celebrate aspects of myself that I either overlooked or felt ashamed of before. Looking back, it’s obvious that my obsessional playing of the Sims – I would never stop narrating my Sims’ lives to my very patient parents – was a ‘special interest’.

Sometimes called monotropism, these are interests that are intensely interesting and preoccupying for autistic people.

Although I don’t play the Sims that much now, delving back into this aspect of my creative life – the Sims is where I learned about storytelling from, after all! – through a different medium has allowed me to find new joy and pleasure in it.

It’s allowed me to claim this interest as something beautiful and valuable; something that helped me survive by giving me another world to escape into and something worthy of writing poetry about.

In general, poetry is a way to explore an obsession or a fascination with something I’m fixated on and discover more about it – and, inevitably, myself as part of the process.

Another part of myself that I often felt was burdensome, or annoying to other people, was my sharply attuned senses which often led to overwhelm or meltdown when I was growing up.

I started to judge myself for these responses and wished that I was different or more ‘normal’. But through writing poetry, I’ve learned to – at times – love how finely tuned and sensitive my senses are.

It lets me notice little details that other people often don’t, and turn these tiny details into poems.

In my nature writing, in particular, I really feel like my experience of the world is shaped by sensitivity to noise and light. Leaning into this lets me write about my relationship with nature in a unique way that has fostered and deepened my love for it. 

Perhaps one of the most important aspects of writing poetry for me is the way it allows me to look forward.

It’s been incredibly healing in terms of thinking about past (structural) violence but it allows me to imagine different futures too. Especially when writing about pop culture, I feel like I’m living between worlds. There’s our world, the pop culture world and the one I’m creating on the page that’s somewhere in between.

Poetry becomes not only somewhere to escape but somewhere to create and imagine different possibilities. I ask myself how could things look different, and question what are the things that I barely dare to dream about.

Poetry gives me the space to explore different answers. 

My own experience has taught me that in a world where a huge number of disabled people are just struggling to survive day to day, poetry is a necessary, essential thing for allowing us to imagine, connect and explore. It allows us to recognise that not only are our lives worthy of art but indeed they are art.

It might sound dreamy, but I’ll never stop trying to write a different future into existence.

Elspeth’s poetry collection Too Hot to Sleep, published by Bent Key Publishing is available now.

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ON HIATUS: Statement on the future of The Unwritten

Updated 28/08/23: Please note, we are on hiatus and emails will not be checked. Our Twitter is also not monitored so please follow editor Rachel on Twitter if you want to keep in touch.

I wanted to update you all on the future of The Unwritten. As you all know I started The Unwritten to give disabled people the space to tell our own authentic stories in a way mainstream media just wasn’t allowing. And though it’s only been a short time, I truly believe we’ve made waves.

However, as my career grows and my conditions worsen, I’ve had to make an incredibly hard decision.

From August, The Unwritten will be on a 6 months hiatus, during which time I will be assessing its and my own direction. 

In the meantime, we have a raft of content still to get out and will be publishing everything we’ve commissioned between now and June. To allow this to happen, we will not be accepting any more pitches. 

We will also still ensure that we pay all writers what they deserve. With this in mind, I’d love it if supporters still did so until July, to ensure all invoices can be paid asap. I want to stress that this decision wasn’t made because of a lack of funding, but because I need to listen to my own body. 

I’m so proud of the voices we’ve elevated and the content we’ve published. Since our launch in December 2020, we’ve published over 200 pieces on so many different aspects of disabled life, paying nearly 100 disabled writers over £3,000. 

The Unwritten from its inception has been a crowdfunded publication and while we’re so grateful for everything donated, this has meant I’ve never been able to pay editors, though I’m very lucky and thankful that Cath, Caroline and Hannah have donated their time. 

This has however meant the majority of running the site has been down to me – with the amazing Laura as inbox gremlin these last couple of months.

While I try to publish as much as I can, I am just one person and a disabled one at that. This is why, for the sake of my mental and physical health, I’ve made the decision to pause The Unwritten. This hasn’t been a decision I’ve made lightly, and I feel tremendously guilty about doing so, but I think now is the right time.

Thank you so much to all of our writers, supporters and readers who have always been there. This isn’t goodbye, it’s see you in a little while.

Rachel Charlton-Dailey

Founder and Editor-in-Chief

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Accessing support meant confronting my own internalised ableism

Any disabled person will tell you about the myriad of barriers that there are to accessing disability support, especially when you aren’t obviously, visibly disabled. But what happens when the biggest barrier you face is your own, internalised ableism?

I was diagnosed with myalgic encephalopathy (ME), systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), and fibromyalgia at 17 years old, and have identified as disabled for over 10 years now. Recently, Autism and ADHD joined my list of comorbid conditions, and I realised that I’ve been disabled for my whole life. Throughout most of 2022, with my SLE and fibromyalgia flaring, and facing a severe case of Autistic burnout, I was spending between $400 and $1000 AUD per month on my health, in a country with a “public health system”. 

Considering that my worsening physical and mental condition meant that I was only able to work part-time, this expense was financially crippling. I decided, with a gentle nudge from my psychologist, to apply for funding through Australia’s National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) to cover the therapies I needed to support my function as a disabled, neurodivergent woman in an ableist, neurotypical world. 

For those of you unfamiliar with the NDIS, it is a scheme rolled out by the Australian Government in 2013 to assist disabled people to access funding for supports that are not covered by our public health system, such as assisted living technology, occupational therapy, support workers, and capacity building psychology for Autistic people. 

Accessing the NDIS is usually a notoriously lengthy and difficult process, and there’s strict inclusion criteria and rules around what you can spend your funding on. 

Despite having identified as disabled for over 10 years, when my psychologist and I first started talking about accessing NDIS funding to pay for my therapies, I was surprised to realise that I didn’t feel “disabled enough” to access the support I needed.

The application form that she sent me sat unopened in my email inbox for weeks while I grappled internally with this voice that told me “you’re not disabled enough to access this funding” and “you don’t deserve this support”. Somehow, I couldn’t comprehend my own disability. I couldn’t fathom how a 29-year-old woman who has two university degrees and a professional job could be eligible for support funding. 

Even though I know that I struggle with things that nondisabled people do not. Even though I can’t remember ever having a pain-free day in my life, and even though I know that most people don’t have to spend up to $1000 a month to be able to work 3 days a week, and then lie in bed exhausted and unable to function for the next 4. 

I’ve spent the last 12 years of my life advocating for invisible illnesses to be recognised as disabilities by the media, the government and the general public, and yet I sat paralysed, unable to recognise it in myself, in order to complete my application. 

The pervasive societal ableism that I’ve fought so hard against for my entire adult life reared it’s ugly head in my subconscious, and it took weeks, lots of therapy, and financial desperation for me to fight it enough to complete my application, and submit it. 

Then came my planning meeting. An hour and a half sitting in a room with an NDIS employee, talking about my goals and support needs. Leading into this appointment, I had so much anxiety. What if she doesn’t think I’m disabled enough? What if she doesn’t believe me when I say I struggle to do my washing and clean my toilet, but I want to go back to university to study medicine? How do I make her realise how much I struggle, when my whole life, I’ve been trained to trick people into thinking I’m capable, and coping?

I’ve used my intelligence as a mask for most of my life, and the vulnerability required to drop the mask in this setting, and admit that I’m not okay and I need help to function was so difficult to muster. 

I had to seek coaching from my psychologist, and friends who have accessed NDIS support prior to my appointment. They told me to “talk about my worst days”, and coached me on the language to use to convey my struggles accurately. They reminded me not to minimise my struggles, the way I’m so used to doing. 

In the end, the planning meeting went well, and I was granted some funding. It’s not enough to cover all my therapies, so I’m going to need to appeal once I’ve had functional assessments done.

I can’t help but to wonder, would I have been granted more funding if I wasn’t fighting my internalised ableism throughout the whole process?

 But at least now, I’ve done the self-work I needed to in order to feel worthy of support. The support I’m able to access are going to better my life, and going forward, as I appeal for more funding, the barriers I will face will be external and system-based barriers. I no longer feel unworthy of support. 

I am “disabled enough”. It just sucks knowing that I needed the external validation of an organisation to feel that way, due to how ableism has infiltrated my brain.

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In Praise of Melamine Picnicware

Vital vessels quickly turn into a disabled person’s worst enemy. 

It is easy to be drawn into the centuries-long battle all disabled people have faced. Earthenware, ceramic, and even the supposedly lighter glass and china. They litter the shop shelves both virtual and real. They draw you in with pretty shapes and quirky designs. 

Silent foes, waiting until they’ve lulled you into a false sense of security to finally start their attack. 

Continue reading “In Praise of Melamine Picnicware”
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Editors Notes: IPSO Told me Nobody Complains About the UK Media’s Ableism- so Let’s Prove Them Wrong

rachel, a white femme with ginger hair sat at the head of a conference table with their laptop in front of them and staring forwards looking mad. Their arm is resting on the desk and their hand is bent forwards. They're wearing big round glasses, watermelon earrings and a dress with planets and spaceships on it
I'm both angry and disappointed

One of my goals this year is to make a lasting change in the reporting of disability in the media. So when I secured a meeting with the head of standards and regulation at the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) about guidelines for reporting disability I thought I was one step closer. Oh, how wrong I was.

IPSO regulates some of the biggest papers in the UK, including Daily Mail, The Sun, The Times, The Telegraph, and Metro – some of the worst offenders in the last decade of casual and downright overt ableism.

But instead of discussing potentially coming up with guidance, I was told by the biggest print media regulator in the UK that there was no remit for this.

Because apparently, nobody complains about the way the media writes about disabled people in this country.

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Happy Holidays from Team Unwritten

a black and tan dachsund wearing a reindeer costume

As the festive period draws in for us we wanted to take a quick minute to wish you all happy holidays and thank you all for your support this year.

We hope that you have a wonderful festive period, that it’s full of rest, joy and not too stressful. If you find Christmas hard, as many do, we hope you can get through it in whichever way is best for you.

Thank you all for the incredible amount of support you have shown us this year, we wouldn’t be able to do what we do without our incredible disabled community.

Be kind to yourselves, remember to fight the system but always prioritise rest. If you need some extra ways to look after yourself, we recommend last year’s Happy Holidays piece.

See you in the new year,

Rachel, Cath and Caroline

The Unwritten editorial team

ps please enjoy Rachel’s dog and editorial assistant Rusty in his Christmas outfits

a black and tan dachsung wearing a rd christmas jumper that is decorated to look like santas outfit with a hood that has a white bobble on the end like santas hat
a black and tan dachshund is a green coat decorated to look like an elves outfit
a black and tan dachshund wearing a green coat decorated to look like a christmas tree

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Scars are Beautiful, not a “Mark of Shame”

Last week, the popular BBC 2 quiz show, Only Connect, perpetuated a stigma we are all too familiar with: that scars are a shameful stain on our bodies. 

During the ‘Connecting Wall’ round of the game, the words “scars”, “stain”, “blot” and “stigma” were listed under the category name “marks of shame”. This language is an unacceptable display of the enduring stigma attached to scars and visible differences. 

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It’s Time to Make All Queer Spaces Accessible

Three Black and disabled folx smile and hold mini flags. On the left, a non-binary person holds both a rainbow pride flag and a transgender pride flag, while a cane rests behind her. In the middle, a non-binary person waves the rainbow flag while in their power wheelchair. On the right, a femme waves both a rainbow and transgender pride flag.

“Another reason I struggled to identify as gay was the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. The Mardi Gras was the first introduction to my people,” explained Hannah Gadsby in her 2020 Netflix special Douglas, “I used to sit there and watch it and go where do the quiet gays go?” 

In her comedy special, Gadsby revealed that she was diagnosed with autism in her thirties, the delay partially because she did not match the prototype of autism, and the prototypical LGBTQ+ individual she saw on her TV screen.

Incorporating accessibility into queer community safe spaces is about acknowledging the diversity within our own community and welcoming people of all ability levels into spaces we create for expression, acceptance, and identity. 

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How Playdough Helped Me Accept My Autistic Repetitive Behaviour

Kaelynn Partlow - femme presenting white woman with light hair in cut off denim shorts, She is with a brown horse and a black dog

To be diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a person needs to have “persistent deficits” in three domains; social interaction, communication, and restricted/repetitive behaviour. “Restricted/repetitive” behaviour includes rituals, stereotypy (repeated movements), and restricted interests in specific topics, or “special interests”. 

I feel it doesn’t get as much attention, and as someone diagnosed with autism at the age of 10, I’d like to share a bit about how some of my restricted/repetitive behaviour evolved over time – using an analogy to illustrate why some things just “stick” and “become a thing”; how they become absorbed into my daily routines.  

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