Every year in July, as LGBTQ+ Pride month is winding down it becomes Disability Pride’s turn to shine.
In celebration of this ParaPride, in partnership with Stonewall Spirits, are sharing experiences of what it means to be LGBTQ+ and disabled and accessibility in LGBTQ+ venues, which are very important culture hubs to a lot of our people.
We caught up with Eileen Eifell, to hear about their experiences with accessibility in LGBTQ+ spaces.
ParaPride: Hi Eileen, thank you so much for joining us for our chat, we are so keen to hear from your experiences. How about we start with a little self introduction?
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Eileen: I’m Eileen Eiffeell - I lead a double life with gender fluidity and expect my pronouns to follow suit. I started adulthood on the road to being a veterinary surgeon but ended up cross-dressing on the stages of queer venues across the country.
ParaPride: Wowsa, what a wild journey, and of course in your you have have joined the stage at some of our events.
Remind us how you got involved?
Eileen: I became involved with Parapride due to Catia - she invited me along to check out Parapride at Hackney town hall last year and then I was fully hooked in!
ParaPride: And we are of course, are hooked on you! We are here to talk about one of our favourite topics: accessibility, particularly when it comes to our LGBTQ+ venues. What has been your experience with this?
Eileen: Accessibility in queer venues is sadly lacking - venues are still, in the main part, on the fringes and, as such, tend to be older, smaller and sadly ill-equipped. So many queer venues have been disappearing over the last decade due to rent hikes, a lack of disposable income and a general drift in habits of the queer community to not going out that having anywhere nowadays is getting rarer.
My biggest disappointment has been transport links - stations closing their lifts and accessibility after certain times means they are effectively imposing a curfew on the physically disabled community.
ParaPride: With so many completing priorities it really is getting tougher and tougher on venues to keep their doors open, and so it is natural that hard decisions need to be made on where to invest in themselves. We of course can still try and encourage venues to make incremental accessibility improvements, not all of them need to be expensive changes to be effective.
You also don't have to run venue to make the going out experience more inclusive, what can anybody to make a change?
Eileen: I think the most important thing is language and communication - this goes for the whole of society, not just the disabled community.
For me it's a case of not asking me if I need help - as if I ever want to admit that - but if I would like help. So, ask “How can I help?” rather than “Do you need help?”. It’s that simple.
About the ParaPride & Stonewall Sprits Partnership
For the months of July – Sep 2024 ParaPride is very grateful to be the beneficiary of Stonewall Spirits incredible ‘Drink & Donate’ pledge, where £1 from every Stonewall Spirits bottle & gift pack sale over this period will be donated to support’s ParaPride’s work.
Stonewall Spirits is a spirits brand that stands apart because their commitment to supporting the LGBTQ+ community extends beyond token representation during Pride month. They prioritise year-round advocacy, promotion and donations to LGBTQ+ charities (having raised around £10,000 so far).
The brand retells the important story of the ‘1969 Stonewall Riots’ and remembers the people who helped create the freedoms for future LGBTQ+ generations.
As an extra special treat, Stonewall Spirits are offering a 10% discount on all orders over this time. Use the code Parapride10 at the checkout at https://www.spiritofstonewall.com/ to access.