Purple Fest 2023 organised a panel under Purple Think Tank on 8th January 2023 was titled the ‘Gender Sexuality Disability’ panel, and our Founder and Executive Director Nidhi Goyal was one of the speakers.
This panel was a critical dialogue that brought together three vital themes of gender, sexuality and disability. Nidhi pointed out why talking about this intersection was necessary in every disability space.
The discussion helped to bring the issues of women with disabilities and queer persons with disabilities to the forefront of a national disability festival, and it was hugely important, as gender marginality and vulnerabilities often get ignored and invisibilised in most mainstream disability dialogues.
Nidhi talked about the importance of inclusive and accessible Comprehensive Sexual Education for youth with disabilities, the unique experiences of sexual violence faced by disabled women where they are desexualised and degendered by societal attitudes while emphasising their disability, and the invisibilisation faced by women with disabilities in mainstream society, amongst other themes.
Consequently, she highlighted how “Not woman enough” and “Not human enough” are attitudes that disabled women frequently encounter – which hampers their daily lives and experiences. She spoke about the need to challenge this by reconfiguring our ideas around gender and disability.