Katouche Goll on Why the Paralympics Were a Watershed Moment for Her
“It's almost like Christmas,” says Katouche Goll about the Paralympics. “Because you get the bare minimum treatment that you wouldn't otherwise get in life. Things are just a bit easier: you get five disabled toilets to choose from. You have seven lifts. You're like, ‘wow.’ But every other day, every other time outside of the Paralympics, you don't necessarily get that.”
Goll is a London-based content creator, disability advocate, and living lexicon of historical, political, and pop cultural wisdom. Most importantly, she is “an enthusiast of all things beautiful.”
“I'm passionate about teaching and learning,” says Goll, who studied global history. “I use my own existence to create a bit of balance in perspective and hopefully introduce people to a perception or perspective that they may not have considered otherwise, specifically pertaining to disabled people, Black people and Black disabled people.”
Goll, who is of Sierra Leonean Creole heritage, does so successfully on her TikTok account @itskatouche where she shares beauty tips, OOTDs, hot culture takes, and social justice commentary. For the Paralympics, TikTok flew her out to Paris to cover the Games and speak to some of Team Great Britain’s athletes.
Watching the para-athletics and boccia events, Goll enjoyed being in a space where she knew that everybody had come to see and cheer on other disabled people. “When I watched boccia, I cried because I'm a crier,” she smiles. “I shed a few small tears, because boccia is a sport specifically for people with cerebral palsy. So it was a bit weird, in a good way, to be in a space where there were so many people who had cerebral palsy. It was a nice feeling to be in a space where you weren’t the odd one out.”
The Paralympics stand out from other public events because disabled people are expected to attend, whereas their presence is often questioned in most other circumstances. “When I’m in the U.K., I’m always a spectacle in public, more so than I’d like,” says Goll. “There, it wasn’t a problem. People didn't really stare at me. People got on with it. They were much more polite.”
While metro access in Paris was just as bad as in London — few lifts, narrow staircases and dangerous, massive gaps between train and platform — people around the city accommodated Goll in a way Londoners don’t. “I remember getting on the train, and people were sitting in the priority area. They got up as soon as they saw me,” says Goll. “In London, I have to ask people to get up, and they often decline, pretend they can't hear me, or try to rush and sit in the priority seat before me.”
The Paralympic grounds were well organized. “Another content creator and I talked about how spaces for disabled people in music venues are always away from the atmosphere and concept,” shares Goll. “They didn't have that issue, wheelchair users were more or less directly behind and could get involved. In that sense, it was good.”
Photo courtesy of Katouche Goll.
Goll sees room for improvement in the arena’s seating arrangements for non-wheelchair users. As someone who alternates between a wheelchair, walking sticks, and of course her famous scooter, it was not always easy for her to move around.
Through her activism, Goll advocates for people to learn about the Social Model of Disability, a framework within disability justice that was born out of the movement as it took off in the late 1970s to the 1990s. “Being a disabled person is a social construct in the same way that race and gender exist on a spectrum and are socially constructed in society,” she explains. “So we make the differentiation of being disabled versus having an impairment. Impairment would be your blindness, your MS, your Down syndrome, your dwarfism, cerebral palsy, etcetera.”
Being disabled is a state of being that's a social condition based on how accessible the society one lives in is. Goll gives glasses as an example: “People who wear glasses have a visual impairment, but they are not socialized as disabled in the same way as other conditions are, because people with glasses are resourced. They can widely access glasses without difficulty, and it doesn't necessarily hold the level of stigma. So you would never consider somebody who wears glasses a disabled person, but they are a support aid of sorts, and without that, they would be impaired and no longer able to access society. You could make the same argument for crutches or wheelchairs or any other assistive technology.”
Photo courtesy of Katouche Goll.
“To summarize it: the Paralympics show that decent, solid access is always feasible.” - Katouche Goll
The Paralympics showed that good access can be a possibility. “I've been to smaller scale events where a willingness to support and create an equitable space matters, sometimes more than even the material resource or the logistics themselves,” says Goll. “And it can make a massive difference to how you experience the space.”
Understanding the Social Model of Disability brings wider awareness of the barriers society creates for people with impairments. “I think that we live in a very segregated society when we think about disabled people and non disabled people,” says Goll. “So unless it comes into your orbit, unless you have a vested interest in it, it's not something people are ever going to think about as much.”
Goll is part of a wider emergence of disabled social media content creators that are sharing their experiences and educating non disabled people about their lived realities. “There’s a lot less of a logistical strain to get information out there,” she says. “You have video content, written content, closed captions, descriptions for all sorts of things that can build that bridge.”
One of her favorite creators is Imani Barbarin of Crutches & Spice. “She has a brilliant mind, loads of experience, and is somebody who I would point anybody in the direction of, if they wanted to learn more about disability from an interpersonal perspective as well as the structural implications.”
Barbarin’s perspective is more U.S.-focused and Goll says that it is harder to come by disabled content creators that are based on the African continent. For a global perspective, she recommends following The Triple Criples, the brainchild of Nigerian British Jumoke Abdullahi and Ghanaian Montserratian Kym Oliver.
Photo courtesy of Katouche Goll.
Goll was raised in a sporty family and enjoys watching the Olympics and Paralympics for the festivity, but she didn’t grow up considering herself a sporty person.
“[Attending the Paralympics] has been quite a watershed moment, or a bit of a transformation,” she shares. “Especially as I'm getting older and thinking about taking care of myself better, I think that employing some sort of sport would actually be good for me.”
Seeing the athletes motivated her. “I think the Paralympics are a great way to showcase disabled people outwardly to people who wouldn't otherwise consider disabled people,” Goll says. “There's a lot of risk around inspiration porn or people not necessarily humanizing the athletes, wanting to compartmentalize them or turn them into some sort of model minority. But I think it's also a great way to kind of re-educate people on our perceived capacity.”