DEVS ONLY: Gender gap?

[myrrh]

Today on a whim, I typed "interabled couple" into YouTube to see what kind of stuff came up. The top 10 hits were all couples where the able-bodied person was a woman. Of the top 20 results, only 4 involved a woman with a disability, one of whom was in a lesbian relationship. I found that really surprising. My first thought is that one of two things must be happening:

1. Maybe women are far more willing to enter into a relationship with a PWD. However, I have seen a LOT of disabled women on social media touting things like being a "disabled influencer" or "disabled mom" or "disability advocate." It seems like most of these women are in relationships, or talk about dating. So I am skeptical that disabled men have an easier time than disabled women when it comes to finding partners. 
2. Maybe relationships with a disabled man and able-bodied woman are less socially acceptable and so those couples would be more inclined to want to "speak out" or promote awareness. Seeing a woman physically assist a man is unusual in any context. I'm tall and strong, but I often have people express shock when I muscle in with the bros to lift a heavy thing or carry in the bags. Since we're used to seeing the man as The Provider and the woman as The Cared For, maybe those relationships are less remarkable... but society needs more training before seeing a woman doing the heavy lifting is less of a shock.

As an interesting little aside, I mentioned this to my wheeler boyfriend. His said that he's reached out to female PWD on dating sites in the past, and each time the woman specified that they were looking for a relationship with an able-bodied man.

Thoughts?

[devogirl]

That is really interesting! I don't know. What you see on social media may not reflect true numbers, just that women are more likely to post publicly about being in interabled relationships, or being advocates. Also I don't think we can say if the male or female PWDs have it harder or easier, there are always so many other factors.

While it is unusual for the female to be the physically bigger or stronger partner in a hetero relationship, a woman with a PWD still fits into the gender stereotype of the woman as carer. While according to the logic of patriarchy, having a hot female partner increases the man's status. I see that even with some PWDs who want a hot dev to prove how manly they are.

As for PWDs dating each other, that's been debated a lot here. It's not always about internalized ableism, sometimes it's a practical issue as well depending on the level of assistance needed.

[dapperdev]

Wow I've thought about this before too!

I have a theory about this based on ZERO evidence but nevertheless:

I think that generally speaking female devs have an easier time approaching PWD's, and vice-versa that male PWD's are more open to female devs, and both are more likely to be open and public about the pwd/dev dynamic.

In recent times I've come across several podcast episodes featuring a dev and a pwd, and in each case the dev is always a female and the PWD a male. My hunch is there's less of a creepy fear factor when it comes to female devs and that they likely come across as more approachable and relatable so there's a willingness on both sides (the listeners and the host/guests) to engage in the subject.

I think many inter-abled couples where the woman has a disability and the guy is either overtly or covertly a dev are much less likely to talk about their relationships openly, let alone create content about it. Again this is total conjecture but as a male dev it seems somewhat plausible.

Also I wonder and I'd be curious to know everyone else's thoughts on this as well, if there's a reasonable likelihood that many inter-abled couples have a dev/pwd dynamic?

[ContingentlyComposite]

I've noticed and wondered about this before as well myrrh. I thought maybe it was some bias on my part where I just took notice of disabled men more! As devogirl points out it seems like there are gender norms that pull in different directions as far as the distribution goes.

[blueskye101]

[quote author="dapperdev" source="/post/216905/thread" timestamp

I think many inter-abled couples where the woman has a disability and the guy is either overtly or covertly a dev are much less likely to talk about their relationships openly, let alone create content about it. ?[/quote]

I also have no evidence this is fact but I feel like this may be true. Like you said, maybe some of the creepy factor that seems to pop up on posts with female Pwd’s and male devs. Not too fair for the decent guys.

[Amee]

I don't know what disabilities you're seeing in these couples, but men are more commonly affected by SCI by a 4:1 ratio compared to women.
And some results from a quick google search:
They're more commonly affected by SMA by a 2:1 ratio compared to women. For CP it's 1.5:1. DMD almost exclusively affects males (because it's a mutation on the X-chromosome).
Women are more commonly affected by spina bifida by a 1.2:1 ratio.
Just the disabilities that came to mind off the top of my head.

[myrrh]

Amee I don't think the relative numbers of disabled men and women is impactful here. As I said in my first post, most of the activity I see on other platforms and in other contexts is from female PWD, but that content focuses on other things- fashion, activism, parenting, etc. My observation is that content focused on "interabled couples" is heavily skewed, not that disability-related overall content is skewed. This actually made me curious and lead to finding this site run by Cornell University, which seems to support a rough premise that there are similar numbers of disabled men and women (in the US at least). 

dapperdev The creep factor probably does play into this, which is something that had totally slipped my mind when posting. That is a shame, but also I hope it serves as motivation to some of the healthy interabled couples out there involving an AB man. We all benefit from normalizing PWDs involved in romance. Funny enough, this has done the opposite for me. I have been mulling over the idea of writing about the topic, but it kind of feels like things are a bit saturated for AB women and PWD men... Maybe not through the lens of devness, though. 

Ugh, after writing these posts, I'd love to never use the term "interabled" again. I still think it sounds so silly, even though it is clearly useful. 

[malibu]

Jan 27, 2022 3:32:41 GMT -5 Amee said:

I don't know what disabilities you're seeing in these couples, but men are more commonly affected by SCI by a 4:1 ratio compared to women.
And some results from a quick google search:
They're more commonly affected by SMA by a 2:1 ratio compared to women. For CP it's 1.5:1. DMD almost exclusively affects males (because it's a mutation on the X-chromosome).
Women are more commonly affected by spina bifida by a 1.2:1 ratio.
Just the disabilities that came to mind off the top of my head.

Wow, I had no idea: "Males account for about 78% of new SCI cases." www.themiamiproject.org/resources/statistics/ 

[Amee]

Jan 27, 2022 11:53:19 GMT -5 myrrh said:

Amee I don't think the relative numbers of disabled men and women is impactful here. As I said in my first post, most of the activity I see on other platforms and in other contexts is from female PWD, but that content focuses on other things- fashion, activism, parenting, etc. My observation is that content focused on "interabled couples" is heavily skewed, not that disability-related overall content is skewed. This actually made me curious and lead to finding this site run by Cornell University, which seems to support a rough premise that there are similar numbers of disabled men and women (in the US at least). 

I'm not discounting other factors as the ones you described in your opening post at all. But I'm not completely convinced that numbers are a non-factor. Maybe I'm wrong and they are, but a few more thoughts:
The fact that content on other platforms and in other contexts is from female PWD may be due to the fact that women are generally more active on social media (correct me if I'm wrong on that, I'm not on social media myself, but I keep hearing constantly, that it's a mainly female thing).
I think the relevant "disability numbers" when we're looking at interabled couples on social media are young people with fairly severe disabilities. Older people are unlikely to be on social media and as far as I'm aware, in most of those interabled couples the disability is at least severe enough to require a wheelchair (again, correct me if I'm wrong).
Maybe I missed it, but on the Cornell University site I only found a very broad definition of "disability" (which would include quite "mild" disabilities) and only a very broad age spectrum, so I find it difficult to use those numbers.
I think it's not unreasonable to assume that SCI being far more prevalent among men can be tentatively taken as accident-related disability in general being more prevalent among men (especially young men, who on average engage in more risky behaviour than women). I don't know what percentage of all severe disabilities among young(ish) people are accident/injury-related disabilities, so maybe the difference does disappear when you take all disabilities into account. But maybe not. 

I do vaguely remember reading a poll that said women are more likely to say they would be open to dating someone with a disability than men, but I can't find it now and I can't swear that I'm remembering it correctly, either.