Alex Iantaffi

“For many disabled people, there is also a specific type of intimacy, which Mia Mingus calls access intimacy. Access intimacy is not just for disabled people; it can also be experienced by many other people who might share experiences of marginalization, such as people of color or trans people. Mia describes access intimacy as “that elusive, hard to describe feeling when someone else “gets” your access needs. The kind of eerie comfort that your disabled self feels with someone on a purely access level.”2 Mia goes on to talk about how it can happen with people with whom there are long-lasting relationships and people we’ve just met. Mia describes access intimacy also as the closeness that emerges from “an automatic understanding of access needs out of our shared similar lived experience of the many different ways ableism manifests in our lives.”
― Alex Iantaffi, Life Isn't Binary: On Being Both, Beyond, and In-Between

“When opinion and facts become equivalent, and when people’s lives become a matter of debate, that’s when we start to get into the lethal waters of fascist rhetoric masquerading as free speech.”
― Alex Iantaffi, Life Isn't Binary: On Being Both, Beyond, and In-Between