Jay Baldwin has been trying to get a diagnosis for endometriosis for nearly a year. The process has been rife with challenges. Healthcare practitioners immediately make the assumption that they are a cis woman, thereby dismissing their non-binary identity. Doctors rarely get their pronouns right. When they share their symptoms or make requests for specific tests, they’re often ignored. Accessing healthcare can leave them feeling invisible, alone and terrified.    

Baldwin is a queer Black disability justice advocate and creator of the Disabled, Queer and Fabulous!, a Facebook group where disabled LGBTQ2S+ people can safely seek support and connection. They say they have faced multiple layers of discrimination whenever they attempt to access healthcare. 
 

“I feel it more now as I get older,” they say. “When I have to go to the hospital, I worry if people are going to take me seriously, if they’re going to misgender me and if they’re going to see me as more than my anatomy.”  

The Ottawa resident is neurodivergent and experiences physical limitations as the result of cerebral palsy and chronic pain. They need extra support—such as assistance getting in and out of their power wheelchair—in order to access healthcare. But often, they say, doctors and nurses don’t realize this in clinics and hospital settings. Baldwin can recall several times that they’ve gone unnoticed after they’ve been placed behind a curtain, or when they’ve been stuck in a bed for days because they couldn’t take their wheelchair with them in the ambulance when going to the hospital. On one occasion, they waited in an emergency department for two days before they were able to get admitted to a room with a ceiling lift.  
 

“I’m too complicated for [healthcare providers],” Baldwin says. “They don’t pay the same attention to me. They don’t treat me with the same amount of care. When I need help, I have to scream to get their attention.” 

Their experiences are indicative, they say, of “how invisible disabled Black LGBTQ2S+ people still are in the places where we need to be seen the most.”   
 

It’s true that Baldwin’s experience doesn’t exist in a vacuum. The need to navigate the compounding weight of anti-Black racism, ableism, homophobia and transphobia is a shared reality that queer and trans Black disabled folks know all too well. 

But through a collective approach to care, researchers, practitioners and advocates are reimagining what a better future could look like. 
 

New report highlights inequities

Canada’s disabled queer Black communities don’t just face systemic inequities in healthcare— intersecting layers of oppression affect people’s experiences in multiple realms, from housing and employment to education and safety. That’s a key finding from the Back to Our Roots Sub-Population Report: Disabled Black 2SLGBTQI+ Populations in Canada released earlier this year by the Enchanté Network (TEN). The groundbreaking study, using data from a 2024 national survey of 400 Black LGBTQ2S+ individuals and concentrating on the 91 respondents who self-identified as living with a disability, focuses on the intersectional experiences of queer Black disabled folks across the country. 
 

“For too long, disabled Black LGBTQ2S+ people have been invisible in Canada’s data and policy conversations. This report makes that invisibility impossible to ignore,” says Tyler Boyce, TEN’s executive director. “The data is staggering: over 85 percent of disabled Black LGBTQ2S+ people report ableism in schools, 80 percent at work and 74 percent when seeking housing. Those numbers reveal overlapping systems of discrimination.”
 

Boyce believes “TEN’s role is to make sure no one sits at the margins of the margins” and “to shine light where systems have turned away.”

The report’s findings resonate with queer,Black disabled Canadians. “I am certain that the barriers mentioned in the report have impacted me personally and professionally,” shares Rabbit Richards, a Vancouver-based poet, facilitator and community organizer whose work is rooted in accessibility and justice. 
 

Richards, who identifies as queer, Black and disabled, sits on the board for Crips for eSims for Gaza, a global initiative where disabled people raise money to provide eSims to Palestinians in Gaza so they can maintain internet access and the ability to communicate electronically. Richards is also involved in efforts to resist medical assistance in dying, more commonly known as MAID, while working with a growers collective that feeds their passion for food and medicine gardening.   
 

They say that factors such as anti-Black racism and ableism have likely prevented them from accessing housing in the past. They remember times where they’ve spoken with prospective landlords over email, and the conversations seemed to be going well. But when they showed up in person, the landlords suddenly didn’t want to rent to them anymore.
 

 “We know where that’s coming from,” Richards says. “Because we, as queer Black disabled people, have enough lived experience and cultural context to read what’s happening.” 
 

While some forms of discrimination are visible and explicit, others can be more difficult to pin down, like being denied an employment opportunity. Richards notes that “discrimination doesn’t always announce itself in every room.
 

“I think about times where I’ve come very, very close to an opportunity or a position, [but wasn’t successful]. I’m sure that if you were to ask [the employer] what their reason was, they’re not going to say ‘you’re just too many of these things that we don’t want to deal with.’”
 

The Back to Our Roots survey shows that disabled queer Black and trans folks have significantly higher employment rates than their non-disabled peers. “It’s a painful paradox that reflects survival, not equity,” Boyce explains. While 84.6 percent of disabled Black LGBTQ2S+ respondents reported being employed, 78.3 percent of their non-disabled counterparts reported the same. However, Black disabled respondents also faced higher rates of workplace discrimination: 63.7 percent were denied employment opportunities due to sexual orientation and gender identity and expression, also known as SOGIE, and 74.7 percent because of race.   
 

When it comes to education inequities, 91 percent of disabled respondents reported that they experienced anti-Black racism at school, compared to 75 percent of non-disabled Black LGBTQ2S+ individuals. 

“We’ve heard stories of students being denied accommodations, navigating inaccessible campuses and facing isolation for being ‘too much.’ Education should open doors—but for many disabled Black LGBTQ2S+ students, it builds walls,” concludes Boyce. 
 

An additional finding in the report addresses the issue of safety: disabled Black LGBTQ2S+ people are more than twice as likely to experience verbal abuse, and twice as likely to face racially motivated attacks.  
 

Looking for Solutions

While the issues of anti-Black racism, ableism and anti-queer-and-trans sentiment are persistent, they don’t have to be permanent. So, how can we co-create and sustain real change for Canada’s queer Black disabled communities?

Richards says it starts with asking, “Who has the resources and isn’t sharing?” because we probably have more resources than we know. They emphasize that white allies also need to step up. 

“Our liberation is going to require a lot of structures to crumble, a lot of currently existing infrastructure to be sidelined. That is necessary. And I don’t think that’s my work,” says Richards. “My work is learning how to feed us, learning how to make sure that medical and psychiatric care are available to us when there’s nowhere to go. It’s important that we start building the infrastructure now for the world that we want to exist in.”
 

The Back to Our Roots report offers more than just evidence, according to Boyce, but a road map that policymakers can employ “to rebuild programs and policies that have excluded disabled Black LGBTQ2S+ people by design.”   
 

TEN recommends investing in intersectional programs and supports for disabled Black LGBTQ2S+ communities, embedding accessibility and anti-racism standards in housing and employment funding and prioritizing disabled Black queer and trans leadership in research, policymaking and program development. 
 

The data is also being used to launch Black Queer Canada, a national movement created by and for Black LGBTQ2S+ people to sustain and expand this work. “We’re not just responding to a report,” adds Boyce. “We’re future-proofing an entire sector so these communities are never rendered invisible again.”
 

Baldwin wants people to know the truth about being a queer Black disabled person in Canada today. 
 

“It’s not simple. It’s not one-size-fits-all. We’re all very different and our experiences, while different, are equally valuable. The way we are able to be in community with each other is by showing up and listening,” they say.
 

“No matter how winding my road gets, knowing that our community will be waiting for me, staying by my side and cheering me on every step of the way, is what keeps me going. This is the most beautiful part of living and being who we are. Knowing that others are there with us.”