30. Dating with a Disability or Chronic Illness

[00:00:00] I am Jacqueline and this is my older sister Alexa and we are the founders of dateability which is the only dating app for our disabled and chronically ill people. We also have 48% of our community identifies as queer and that is an astounding number

[00:00:22] but there is such large intersectionality between disabled people and the queer community. It's really beautiful to see how diverse and how inclusive we are and that people do feel like capability is a safe space no matter who they are and how they identify or who they love.

[00:00:41] Today, dating when you have a Disability or Chronic Illness, I'm Elton Sherwin your host. This is true that people with a Disability or Chronic Illness are more likely to identify as queer, the Autism Research Center says. Contemporary research on the intersection of autism, sexuality and gender identity

[00:01:24] asserts that autistic individuals are more likely to identify as LGBTQ plus than the neurotypical population. Similarly, the prevalence of autism is higher among transgender people. That was from the Autism Research Center. Everybody needs love but if you have a disability or Chronic Illness it can be a

[00:01:47] especially hard to find a partner or lover. But before we delve into this fascinating topic let me tell you how this episode came to be and to do that I have to invite you behind the curtain into my world. I produce six podcasts, most people don't know that.

[00:02:09] Three of them focus on queer affirming and sex positive interpretations of the Bible. The Bible in homosexuality is the most successful of these podcasts. The second is the queer Christian which is almost identical to the Bible in homosexuality but marketed and branded differently to attract a broader audience.

[00:02:34] And the third is our most recent addition to this family of affirming podcasts. And it is a Spanish version called la Bibela i la homosexuale d'I. All three are available on major podcasting platforms.

[00:02:51] My other three podcasts are for the rotary e-club of Silicon Valley which is the original source of today's podcast. Rotary is a non-religious service organization with a motto that is strikingly Christlight, service above self. Rotarians are people who believe

[00:03:14] that helping others brings more joy to their lives than buying stuff for themselves. My rotary, the e-club of Silicon Valley is one of three thousand rotary clubs but it is unique within Rotary not only are its meetings online but they're available as podcasts and YouTube

[00:03:36] videos anytime of day. This makes us ideal for parents or young professionals or people with long commutes or for service men and women. We have a lot of members living outside of the US

[00:03:51] and since we don't meet in person our programs are also well suited for individuals living with a disability or chronic illness. Really anyone anywhere in the world for whom attending a weekly meeting just isn't realistic but who enjoy hearing about positive change. Rotarians,

[00:04:13] a million due gutters around the world. So every week 52 weeks a year, Rainer Shine, I produce a 30-minute video podcast on Spotify and an audio podcast for Apple, audible and several other podcasting platforms. These are interesting stories from around the globe

[00:04:34] and the name of that podcast is The Weekly Rotarian which anyone can listen to. Recently I produced a rotary podcast that fascinated me. Most of them are fascinating but I thought you would be interested in hearing this one and I'm going to play that podcast

[00:04:52] in a moment. But before I do let me mention the two other podcasts that I produce for the Rotary e-club of Silicon Valley. One is called Inspiring Solutions for a Better World. This is a best

[00:05:06] of series where we take the best presentations and interviews from prior years and we podcast them. Inspiring Solutions is the exact opposite of the evening news. It features people and organizations who've done something positive or inspiring in the world. Finally my newest podcast which

[00:05:29] I am very excited about and hope you will love is called Development Success Stories. These are presentations and interviews with people who have successfully improved the well-being of a community. Many of these stories could be replicated and some are ridiculously inexpensive compared to

[00:05:51] the economic and health benefits they provide. So my club decided to share these stories as podcasts. Development Success Stories I hope you will try this exciting series. I will put all six podcast

[00:06:07] names and their links at the very end of the podcast notes. Now without further ado let me turn to today's fascinating story. You'll hear about a minute of intro from our rotary clubs host

[00:06:24] rushed in Hurley and then he will hand it over to Jacqueline and Alexa and their story. Welcome everybody this is the rotary e-club of Silicon Valley every week we bring the stories of people who are making the world a better place locally globally and digitally. We think that's

[00:06:43] a cool way to be thinking about your own possibilities and as a rotary club, as a service organization that thing of getting together with others who share an interest in improving communities

[00:06:54] is part of the energy that we enjoy so much right? You know, they're all these people. They bring together like their time talent treasure to make life better for others. That's a good way

[00:07:05] to spend time. If you're interested in that kind of thing you can learn more about rotary specifically at rotary.org or our club at rotary.cool I love that you can do that. Now

[00:07:19] as we think about this first of all I'm about to hand it over to our speakers. We've got a fantastic interview and presentation coming up and in getting to know them they will tell you a little bit

[00:07:30] about themselves but if you are curious to know more then on the webpage where you find our program and recording or our YouTube channel area or on our podcast page you'll find the full bios

[00:07:46] and you are welcome to read those as well. We would encourage you to do so. You'll find links to their background and the dateability app and this kind of thing. So we're excited. We're excited to hear about this very interesting approach to making the world a better place

[00:08:02] and Alexa and Jacqueline it is such a pleasure for you to in a such a much for us to have you join us as part of the rotary club. This will look on Valley this week. I hand the mic

[00:08:13] over to you. Welcome. Thank you. Yeah thank you so much and it's our pleasure. Do you want to start? Yeah so I am Jacqueline and this is my older sister Alexa and we are the founders of

[00:08:27] dateability which is the only dating app for our disabled and chronically ill people. So this story of how we came up with dateability starts around 2009 when I was 14 years old I developed various chronic illnesses after a seemingly healthy childhood and we grew up in a

[00:08:52] really small town called Tellier, I had a call orado and I lived a very sheltered life. So I wasn't experiencing so much abolism in my social life definitely some remarks from teachers and

[00:09:08] from people who didn't know me well but I had a very typical high school experience with dating. Then I went off to college and of course you're in another bubble and that was fine and then once

[00:09:23] I graduated college I moved to Denver with Alexa and I signed up for the mainstream dating apps and part of my chronic illnesses and disabilities is extreme joint pain fatigue. Lots of digestive issues really symptoms from my head to my toes so it really does affect

[00:09:46] every part of my life and it truly helps shape me into the person I am today and I realized that the world did not see chronic illness as a strength or something that was attractive and I received

[00:10:05] a lot of rejection, a lot of discrimination for example people would tell me not to have biological children because I could pass on my chronic illnesses or they would tell their families about me

[00:10:18] and then their families would give them a warning not to date me because I would be a burden. So that was really difficult and obviously after you're being told so many times that

[00:10:30] you are on worthy of a relationship because of this thing that you can't control you start to believe it and so myself a steam was really affected by my dating experiences and I became sort of a

[00:10:43] shell of myself and I really tried to isolate myself as best as I could and I do not have any confidence and then back in 2021 we're still on lockdown and this sort of level playing field I felt like

[00:11:01] with everyone, everyone sort of got a glimpse into my world of isolation. I had to make the difficult decision with my medical team to get a feeding tube placed and my feeding tube is placed

[00:11:13] in my abdomen and I basically get most of my nutrition from there and so I don't eat three meals a day, I don't eat as a typical person would and when I do eat I have major consequences with

[00:11:30] puking and that freaked both of us out and had that would affect my social life so I had reiterated who likes that I wish there was a place where I could meet people like me who

[00:11:41] wouldn't be freaked out about having a chronic illness or having a feeding tube and that they would just be a little more understanding and a success suggested that we make this place

[00:11:53] ourselves and that's exactly what we did and so we as I'm you know it's I had my surgery on November 10th 2021 and we are in the hospital room I was there for a week and we got our notebooks

[00:12:08] out started drying up what we wanted to look like and neither of us had any experience with this so we just went there and got in stinks and they're like okay I guess you have to design your

[00:12:20] an app and then eventually find someone to build it because neither of us are technical and that's what we did and then so we launched on October 21st 2022 and so we didn't want

[00:12:34] which I've been said in October a year and a half ago and what we wanted to do with the app was bringing our favorite aspects of the other dating apps which we had both been on before and so for

[00:12:45] example you know the liking and matching with people in order to message them mechanism we liked that grinder has a user driven algorithm and we wanted to adopt that we wanted our users to be able to

[00:12:59] choose to themselves so they wanted to match with and not necessarily leave it up to AI to figure out whose moves compatible because in our experiences those weren't working for us on the other apps.

[00:13:10] The other thing that we wanted we wanted to make just the issue of disclosure easier we wanted to solve that problem so when Jacqueline was dating a lot of times she would fit struggle with how do I

[00:13:21] tell someone I'm disabled how do I like when do I tell them how will they respond and the disclosure aspect really caused her a lot of anxiety and we've heard that from so many people in this community

[00:13:32] that the disclosure aspect is one of the hardest just that anticipation and so we created the data of the deep section which is an extensive list of broad terms like we'll share user immunocompromised food allergy and that goes on the user's profile under their basic information

[00:13:47] and it's a really neutral way of disclosing one's chronic illness or disability. It's really reduces the anxiety you get to be able to tell other users like this is the situation without

[00:13:59] getting into the nitty gritty and I think it really creates a basic level of understanding and respect without having to have that conversation that so many feel might be kind of intrusive or uncomfortable

[00:14:10] at least in the very beginning. And so for example Jacqueline would have chronic pain and chronic fatigue on her data-related deep section and so somebody looking at that who matches with her isn't going

[00:14:20] to go ask her to climb a 14er that's weekend because they know that that's not doable for her and so she doesn't we don't they don't have to have that back and forth about what plans to do they

[00:14:30] can make accommodations and failure out of plan that works for both of them together and so it's seamless. We also have image descriptions on the photos which a lot of the apps don't have

[00:14:41] we have a profile verification function that really helps enhance safety and really like we're trying to make the tech and the app itself accessible in addition to our mission of making love accessible since launching we have almost 20,000 users several success stories they're all over North America.

[00:15:03] Some have started out as long distance. Some happen to live in the same city as each other and the disabilities are so diverse so you know disabled and currently oh people will make up the

[00:15:13] world's blood just minority and I think a lot of people forget that or they think the disability only looks one way and that's really not true. One of our success stories they are both on the

[00:15:21] autism spectrum another success story he has cerebral palsy and his partner has a limb difference and it's like he got your disabilities another success story has chronic illness another one was disabled in a bicycle crash and her partner has Parkinson's and so it's really you know very

[00:15:44] there's a variety of disabilities but the common theme among all these people is that they want love their worthy of love they want intimacy and I think that's something that the rest of the

[00:15:54] world forgets and takes for granted and I know someone who's not disabled the world is so accessible to me I can just if I wanted you go out to a brewery on a Saturday and meet all these people

[00:16:05] and it's just not like that for a lot of people and it wasn't like that for Jacqueline and so while we set out to solve this problem that she was experiencing really we have undertaken whole you know

[00:16:17] larger problem and are seeking out to solve the social to change social experiences of the disabled community and we're very excited. Yeah and you know we really do see ourselves changing the world for good and because so many people under value connection and they

[00:16:40] they don't realize just how many aspects of life loneliness can affect and we we see this loneliness epidemic just it's so prevalent and we really want this community who has been ignored and

[00:16:56] overlooked for so long to feel like that there is this place where they belong. I think there's there's this lack of culture among the disability community and you know there's there's a lot of culture within other marginalized communities like the queer community or the black community

[00:17:14] and I think it can be difficult for the disability community to come together one because it is so diverse but to the world was not made with for us with us in mind and so there is these there

[00:17:30] are all there are there are these accessibility issues where yeah I mean like the spaces like literally they're in a successful they can't go in or they feel like they they don't belong

[00:17:43] and it's not inclusive and like Blacks said we have you have several success stories and like those ages range from the sickness 60s to early 20s and so that's really great we've seen this

[00:17:56] large influx of older people and which which shocked us because someone wants to hold us you either agent disability or you die young and that that really was profound and unfortunately

[00:18:12] we learned that ableism does not stop when you reach a certain age we've heard from a lot of users that who are in that age group that people are still judgmental and they still will

[00:18:26] discriminate against you and so we're really pleased that that we have offered this platform for people to connect in that it's truly working and that there's the proof is in the pudding but another aspect of disability and the movement we are promoting is increasing their representation of

[00:18:48] disabled entrepreneurs it can be really hard to be an disabled entrepreneur but it's possible and I never thought it could be I always felt like you know I do struggle with a lack of energy

[00:19:05] and fatigue and just having having so much unpredictability with my chronic illnesses so I was like oh there's no way I could run a business like this but I've realized that I can and then

[00:19:21] I just have to adjust and adapt and really talking about it is important for us and having other people who are in the disability community realize that they can do it but also having people

[00:19:36] outside of the community realize that disabled people are good employees can do it because the work force is just not accommodating to disabled people and there are a lot of wrong assumptions about our capabilities and our work ethics and you know just because

[00:19:55] someone's work schedule doesn't look like another person doesn't mean they are not as productive or a good employee so that's that has been a really important part that we want to publicize and talk about because that's something that we didn't really get going to this thinking

[00:20:15] all we want to be a spokesperson for disabled entrepreneurship but it's it's been a really nice new perspective for me and for people and I think it's important to fill that gap of that is largely empty with just among disabled entrepreneurs because disabled entrepreneurs and founders

[00:20:37] are 400 times less likely to receive venture capital funding and I think it's two women founders received I think it was 2.5% of all the venture capital funding last year so if you can buy and female and disabled founders together into one there's like no venture capital funding for

[00:20:55] us and I really thought going into it and I usually so that we would be the exception because we are the only players in this space but we found out that we're not it's really hard to get funding

[00:21:07] a lot that to say you know talking about disability and intimacy is either you know somebody can't relate which is for excited because it's the only minority that you can join at any point

[00:21:16] in for your life for any reason or it makes people feel uncomfortable because a lot of tends to say what people are in fandalized or they just a lot of things are focused on getting necessary services like medical services employment, quality life but people like Jacqueline said

[00:21:31] forget that connection is quality of life and connection and loneliness can affect your mental health your physical health they say that people who are lonely tend to develop more heart disease it can

[00:21:42] affect your work product and how efficient you are at work and so it really does affect everything and I think the rest of the world overlooks that and we are just here to bring a lot of awareness

[00:21:54] to a lot of different things while keeping our focus, you know we're trying to keep our focus that we are here to make love accessible and then you know the side projects are having to do

[00:22:04] with disabled entrepreneurship and calling on you know black of marriage equality among disabled people and they all really do tie back into each other and we are just really happy and water that we are the ones spearheading this yeah so thank you guys so much and we

[00:22:21] are here to answer any and all questions there were another 18 minutes of Q&A here are two minutes of the highlights so we are available in North America and hopefully we'll expand globally soon

[00:22:40] but that does come with a price so we're building our strong market presence in North America so we we're shockingly we are split very 50 50 for male and female which is incredible because most

[00:22:57] the dating apps are majority men and so that's that's been a fun surprise and then we also have 48% of our community um identifies as queer and that is an astounding number but there is such large intersectionality between disabled people and the queer community so it's not shocking

[00:23:22] but it's really it's really beautiful to see how diverse and how inclusive we are and that people do feel like didability is a safe space no matter um who they are and how they identify or who

[00:23:34] they love and you know we're happy that we have 20,000 users in just a year and a half with zero marketing budget there is no cost right now and that was really important to us to start out for

[00:23:44] a to gain the trust of this community but it isn't just for disabled people 10% of them or not so with you know you don't have to diagnose somebody when suggesting go on date of building

[00:23:53] when they meet their partner there will be really grateful. Well I mean it sounds like you brought compassion into into a space that is going to be appealing to lots of people while wine things

[00:24:03] down and then headed back to YouTube for the final word all of you who've taken your time to join us and learn about the cool things that are happening around the world to make communities better

[00:24:14] to improve people's lives in the kind of innovative way that we see with date ability we thank you for your time. As we always like to do a hand-in-back to our speakers for the final words

[00:24:23] so Jacqueline and Alexa what would you like people to have clearly in mind as they finish watching the video? Yeah we would just love to encourage everyone to join the movement to making love

[00:24:33] accessible um we are available for free to download on apple um android and available at dateabilityapp.com we're also on all the social media platforms um we are always here to answer

[00:24:49] any questions or to receive any feedback and I just want to let the world know that we are committed to making do ability that go to platform for the world's largest minority

[00:25:02] but and we really thank you for this opportunity to present yes thank you so much. Well it's inspiring thank you both and everyone else we will see you next week. Thank you Alexa thank you Jacqueline

[00:25:17] and thank you Russian. I love for you to subscribe to one of our rotary podcasts. I recommend starting with development success stories or inspiring solutions for a better world I will put

[00:25:34] the names and the links at the end of the podcast notes. This is Elin Churwen stay safe, stay brave and God bless