Love, Loneliness, and the Disabled Man

Abishek Anicca on the complex interplay between disability and masculinity

Dear Readers,

The past few weeks brought some highs along with some necessary slowdowns due to my health — a gentle reminder to pause and prioritise self-care. The highs came from the excitement of conducting my first training for three Indian newsrooms – BehanBox, The News Minute and queerbeat – thanks to a grant from the Solutions Journalism Network. In a four-hour workshop on “Reporting on disability through a solutions lens”, we went through why solutions journalism has the potential to change the dominant stereotypical narrative on disability and how we can craft stories that accurately represent the community.

Among others, here’s a review from Shruti Sunderraman of queerbeat:

“I've already been working as a queer reporter and editor who's worked with marginalised and disability intersections for years, but I still came out with frameworks that I am going to carry with me in my stories. I think in the dreariness of problem-based reporting that we often are used to in journalism, the solutions-based lens was a healthy reminder of what sustains our work! Thanks Priti!”

Thank you, Shruti and the others who participated and engaged with the content!

Hire me

Would you like a customised training for your organisation? I conduct training/workshops for newsrooms, communications teams, NGOs, and all kinds of organisations. I’m an accredited trainer of Solutions Journalism and Gender Equality Diversity and Inclusion and specialise in disability inclusion and accessibility in content. Write to me at pritisalian@gmail.com.

Book a 15-minute free call with me on Topmate to discuss how we can work together.

Incidentally, queerbeat – a friend of Reframing Disability – published a powerful essay by Abhishek Anicca last week, and kindly permitted me to republish it in this issue. queerbeat is a collaborative media project focused on building public understanding of queerness in India. I highly recommend checking out more of their novel work centring queer voices that you won’t find in mainstream Indian media.

[ID: Black and white photo of Abhishek, an Indian man with glasses, a beard and a receding hairline, leaning on a table with his hands clasped. He’s wearing a dark button-up shirt with rolled sleeves, and a wristwatch, and smiling into the camera.]

Abhishek is an Indian queer disabled writer, poet and performer. His first book in English – The Grammar of My Body (Penguin, 2024)– is a collection of memoir essays about living with disability and chronic illness.

He told Reframing Disability: “This piece is an extension of my lifelong pursuit of exploring possibilities and improbabilities of a disabled life through longing and belonging in digital and lived reality.” Read on…

Why a disabled man can never be ‘man enough’

“Looking for a woman who can handle housework.”

‍“She should be able to take care of the groom.”

“The bride has to be less disabled than the groom.”

These are phrases that frequently pop up on Physically Handicapped Marriage Group, an obscure Facebook group for disabled people to find partners. The group currently has about 6000 members. Although it is public and anyone could theoretically sign up and post on it, in practice, it is dominated by posts for and by men looking for brides.

The posts largely replicate the traditional matrimonial format. They have a ‘biodata’ that includes details like caste, religion, employment status, income and wealth, and marital status of siblings. These posts are often created by family members and adhere to the norms of caste and patriarchy. What makes these posts unique, though, is that all of them come with some sort of description of the prospective groom’s disability.

‍

“The groom has mild disability, only forty percent.”

“Disability is seventy percent, but he is able to do everything on his own.”

‍“Minor problem in eyesight.”

“Small issue with walking. Just a little.”

These descriptions are often accompanied by qualifiers, which are supposed to redeem the men and prove they are worthy suitors despite their disability.

“The man earns a living.”

“The groom's family owns a house.”

‍

People throw percentages of disability like astrological signs, hoping they might help find a compatible partner. A lower number is better, although less than forty is not ideal because that’s the benchmark that qualifies a disabled person for benefits from the government. Essentially, everyone’s looking for just the right amount of disabled — too much is a burden, too little means losing out on potential perks.

The disabled world has always operated this way, even before online matchmaking became the norm. Families and friends do most of the connecting, based on a few ‘common sense’ rules: severely disabled people are to be matched with folks who have less ‘crippling’ disabilities, wealthy disabled people can be matched with able-bodied people without means, and so on. Those who can’t find partners through their networks resort to matchmaking agencies, non-government organisations, or participate in mass weddings. After all, life is lonely. And people need sex, but that part is never said explicitly.

‍

In mainstream discussions about masculinity in India, disabled men are seldom discussed as a category. According to Robert McRuer, an American theorist who works on disability and queerness, the idea of a man—a ‘normal’ man—entails compulsory able-bodiedness. Disability is often defined in terms of lack and incompleteness. So, disabled men rarely get to experience the privileges of being a ‘man.’ The complexity of their masculinity is rarely acknowledged by society.

One can’t blame it only on society, though. Disabled men themselves rarely embrace their position as the ‘other men’—ones who do not fit into the heteronormative able-bodied ideal. Despite their othering, many spend their entire lives trying to fit in. The able-bodied people around them set the prescribed format for them to become more ‘normal’—a respectable job, a heteronormative marriage, and children. Even if society will never treat them equally—on par with an able-bodied employee, an able-bodied partner, or an able-bodied parent—they keep trying to adhere to the prescription. The able-bodied people have drilled the aspiration to ‘normality’ into them since childhood, offering stigma and pity in equal measure.

This constant pressure to be ‘normal’ has negative consequences for the self-esteem of disabled individuals. For one, society sends regular reminders that no matter how hard they try, they will always be different. Secondly, they often turn the able-bodied gaze of society inwards, resulting in shame, inferiority complexes and all-round disastrous consequences for their emotional well-being.

Disabled men with class-caste privilege deal with this shame by finding reassurance in the idea that by achieving the normative goals, they might be able to assimilate into ‘normal’ society. But the anatomy of masculinity in the disabled world is shaped less by societal privilege and more by bodily disprivilege—your identity is defined by your “incompleteness”.

‍Are you man enough?

‍Man enough to have sex?

‍Man enough to be a husband?

‍Man enough to run a family?

‍Man enough to make decisions?

‍

Questions like these keep appearing inside disabled men and raise some complicated dilemmas about sex, sexuality, autonomy and personhood. Considering yourself a man is not good enough. You have to prove it throughout your life by fitting into the prescribed masculine roles, particularly of the hegemonic, heteronormative variety.

According to theorists like Raewyn Connell, the idea of hegemonic masculinity is rooted in the idea of men trying to dominate women and displaying power over other men. Every other kind of masculinity, be it subordinate, complicit, or marginalised masculinity, is established in comparison to hegemonic masculinity. Traits like hyper independence, lack of emotion and physical aggressiveness become the core of this ‘hegemony’, a term Connell borrows from Italian political philosopher Antonio Gramsci.

Clearly, many disabled men with physical, intellectual, and psychosocial disabilities can’t even aspire to the idea of hegemonic masculinity, since many of them are dependent on caregivers to fulfil their physical and emotional needs. Even those who are comparatively bodily-privileged and can lead a relatively independent life struggle with the hostility and inaccessibility of public spaces in India.

Against this backdrop, one could claim that disabled men fit more in the category of ‘other men’ rather than hegemonic men. For example, able-bodied men have always bullied disabled men around them. They bully them in schools, in colleges, and in unknown streets. Disabled men have been constantly targeted by able-bodied men with comments on their bodily abilities. Questions around their sexual abilities and attractiveness are normalised in friendly discourse. Even within their families, many disabled men find themselves excluded from any kind of decision-making since being care-dependent often results in infantilisation. In online spaces, humiliation disguised as humor has become routine. All of this, coupled with a lack of employment opportunities and the struggle for everyday dignity, forces disabled men to raise many questions about their sense of self.

The disabled man, online and offline, is always in a conundrum. On one hand, they want to belong, and in this quest, they try to put themselves out in the world. They do things that make them ‘normal’. They dance, cook, and navigate public space—telling the world that they are capable of living with certain degrees of independence. That they are passionate and emotional beings, fully-formed individuals who deserve to be acknowledged for their personhood. On the other hand, they are always under threat from the able-bodied gaze. People can get away with abusing and humiliating them in front of others. They are empowered, but they continue to remain helpless. Always longing to belong, and yet never belonging.

Even for those willing to embrace their identity as the ‘other,’ the path is difficult—and vulnerability alone isn’t enough to shield them from marginalisation. For example, when a disabled person embraces the queerness of their body, it comes with its own repercussions. Any attempt at deviating from their assigned gender role, or vulnerably and openly expressing their desires, or any kind of performative assertion of their sexuality quickly comes under scrutiny. This increases the bias and stigma against you, and people are less likely to help you, as opposed to when you are just a disabled man. In the imaginarium of hetronormative able-bodied society, a disabled man is not capable of personhood, and therefore, disabled persons have been desexualised. Aspiring to personhood, in turn, makes you less deserving of any kind of pity that the world has to offer.

Despite all the stigma, for many disabled men, queerness comes as a relief, a path that allows you to not fit into the heteronormative ideals of masculinity. It helps people navigate beyond binaries and find spaces where they can express their embodied selves. After all, not every person has the same means of sexual expression. Disabled bodies don’t have the same agency over their body and therefore might never fit into the heteronormative ways of performing sex and gender roles.

Queerness, though, comes with its own baggage. Within queer communities, there are normative ideals of belonging. There are standards of attraction, beauty and sexual confidence that you are constantly aspiring to. Your caste, class, regional location, cultural capital can also become determinants of the queer spaces you have access to. You might end up asking yourself, ‘Am I queer enough?,’ leaving you lonely and alienated within a community.

A disabled friend who is turning forty this year told me he is waiting to crack a government job. After that, he will ask the woman of his dreams to marry him. An able-bodied woman, naturally. Another acquaintance who is severely disabled reminds me often that whatever else is wrong with his body, everything works “down there” and any suitor won’t be disappointed. Many others are waiting for an unrequited lover to finally see them for who they really are, inside and out. They have been waiting for years, not yet ready to give up on that. Many of us, across disabilities, share similar dreams. Our dreams appear ‘normal’—but only because they reflect able-bodied ideals. We didn't grow them ourselves; we inherited them from a world that taught us to seek belonging through conformity. We borrowed them from the world, hoping that by becoming more like everyone else, we’d finally be seen, accepted, and made whole.

This is not to prove that there is some all-encompassing victimhood of the disabled man. Disabled men, like any other marginalised group, have the agency to find their way through the maze of masculinities. Most of them are very pragmatic. Some have played out entire love stories in their head, or created alternative personalities online where they find companionship, love, and sex. Some have found relief in family structure and kinship. Others have found freedom in queerness and have built non-conforming relationships and friendships around them. Most of them resist by dreaming about alternate ways of living and thriving, and by reimagining love and pleasure. Disabled people make different choices according to their bodily and societal privileges. All of them can be celebrated.

One wonders, though, what if there were no incessant demands of being ‘normal’. The imagination of how the disabled men can live is often restricted by the lack of imagination that the heteronormative society prides itself on. What if there were no patriarchal heteronormative rules to abide by? Would there have been an increased agency for disabled men? Would there be a reimagination of family and friendships? And of caregiving and companionships? We will not know until the world is ready to change. Until then, we would keep aspiring to the idea of ‘normal’, constantly trying and failing to keep up.

A male moderator of another matrimonial group told me that finding a bride for someone like me would be difficult because I wear a diaper. He said that women want sex, and since I wore a diaper, there would be questions over my capabilities. An hour into that conversation, I realised that the moderator too was a single, severely disabled man, desperately looking for a partner. His version of ‘what women want’ was not only a reflection of what society presented to him as the ideal, but also a reflection of the incompleteness he saw within himself. I felt bad for him, not because he was a lonely disabled man but because he, like many of us, had bought into the heteronormative able-bodied imagination and the lies it sold in the name of normality.

This story was first published in queerbeat.

---

What do you think of this essay? Would you like to see more essays on lived disabled experiences in Reframing Disability? Share your thoughts by hitting reply and engage with me on LinkedIn and Instagram. Reframing Disability has its own account on Instagram.

Until soon.

Warmly,

Priti