At its best the LGBT subculture, comprising networks of many varrying kinds can be an accepting and support-centred community, where people of similar sexual orientation and lifestyle can find a sense of belonging Many find liberation from the judgement of homophobics and the general puritanical ignorance which sadly still pervades British society. At its worst however Queer communities can lack substance, they can be mere sites of selishness, based on sex, a pretty face and pointless one-night-stands; sexual encounters which lack friendship, free love without love. Gay subculture in particular is so often based on superficiality, shallowness and beauty leaving those of us who don't fit into this Adonis mould feeling stigmatised.

As a farm-boy teenager growing up as gay and disabled I felt actively excluded from this discourse the perfect body. I felt and still sometimes do feel a sense of isolation when I look back to those first tentative coming out experiences, not feeling good enough, with no one who could understand the loneliness I was feeling. I had no role-model, no one disabled and gay I could find comfort and strength in. There is still a lack of such a role model to date and as long as this still is the case disabled queers will continue to suffer. I was a minority within a minority and it hurt. Being to some extent an outsider among strangers gives one a real first-hand experience of prejudice. Your looked down upon or more often pityed, which is worse. You feel like a leper, you don't fit in anywhere in particular. From this vantage point I could see some obvious defects. Firstly to reduce the meaning of being homosexual, bisexual, transgendered ect to merely the act of having sex and secondly building our lives around this hedonism is I believe very shallow. I think, being gay extends far beyond my sexual relationships, it gives me insight into love in general, enables me to play about with gender-roles and find new modes of sel-expression. To make another parellel being straight is obvious more than just getting the girl, it comprises allot more, sexual preference is an expression of our innermost being, not just what's between our legs.

LGBT Liberation in society will only be complete when we can except the minorities within minority and the diversity within diversity. This means moving beyond shallowness, the body, sex ect and finding an equal place for everyone . No one should feel an outsider and no one deserves to go through the kind of marginalisation I did. Body image and ablism-(prejudice because of disability) are issues of concern just as much as say homophobia and bi-phobia LGBT people should actively fight the tyranny and conformity proposed by the discourse of the body beautiful to merely for the sake of queer disabled people but for others who feel excluded because of their bodies. Women understand this fact more than most. In a subculture like ours based on difference there is no room for it. We must fight the superfical conformity and scene-cultuure which corrupts and cheapens queer-life. We must fight the prejudice within before we declare war on the enemy without. I will not feel satisfied untill I can walk down the street without odd glances, or comments being made. I will not be happy untill I go to Mission and inwardly every man I see will view me as their sexual equal, their perceptions untainted by pity or sympathy or even digust. I'M QUEER, DISABLED AND PORUD TO BE DIFFERENT!