Imagination Bodies Forth the Forms of Things Unknown

For me, it’s never been so cut and dry. Sure, there are parts of my body that I’m uncomfortable with and for the most part choose not to acknowledge but there are also parts of my body that I feel connected to and would not give up for the sake of transitioning or passing. Additionally, there are parts of masculinity I have no desire to adopt. More than that, though, I don’t see my gender as something so simple as being one thing trapped in another. I feel an intense connection with my past as a woman and my connection to other women and femininity while crossing over into masculinity (additionally there have always been parts of me that were masculine. For example, I remember in middle school long before I even thought about what being trans might mean, while I was just beginning to question what queerness might mean, one of my classmates asked me why I walked like a guy). I think the idea of bodyminds pushes us to question these binaries and dichotomies that pits the mind against the body when in reality they work in conjunction with one another. I think challenging conventional ideas about disability in the same way that I/we challenge ideas of transness is similar. For example, with Stephen Hawking, many folks characterize him as a genius trapped in a failing body. But if we think about him through the lens of bodyminds, we see that his body and his mind are one in the same.

As for unit 6, one of the biggest obstacles facing disabled people and that enables ableist mindsets is that we culturally have very limited ideas of what disability is, what it looks like, the potential and capacity disabled folks have, etc. Going back to bodyminds, we very much think of disability in terms of the body. A person in a wheelchair. A person with downs syndrome. If we acknowledge disabilities of the mind, or neurodivergence, we only acknowledge it in cases that also affect the body, such as extreme autism. We also have a tendancy to think about disability as permanent whereas anything else is temporary impairment. This entire mindset shapes our understanding of disabled people, their bodies, and their lives, including their sexualities or sexual capacity. Disabled sexuality is outside of heteronormativity. Ableism and heteronormativity enforce one another as well as other structures of power, as Siebers, by way of Weeks, points in regards to the sexual citizen. For starters, we mostly still view sexuality in regards to our capacity to procreate, which inherently means an ablebodied cisgender man and an ablebodied cisgender woman. It’s ironic then that we don’t necessarily view sterility as a disability but rather as a moral failing. The idea of disabled people having a sexuality is outside of our realm of thinking, culturally, because we have such a tendency to infantilize disabled people. This was reinforced when we watched the video in class of the disabled man in a non-platonic relationship with an ablebodied woman. So many people would come up to them assuming that because he was in a wheelchair, he was also nonverbal or disabled in the mind (another challenge to our body/mind dichotomy) and that she was his caretaker rather than his girlfiend. We have such a hard time imagining disabled people as sexual and we really don’t think about the potential for disabled people to be queer.

Shalk, S. (2018). “Introduction.” In Bodyminds Reimagined: (Dis)Ability, Race, and Gender in Black Women’s Speculative Fiction.

Similarly, to the last unit, someone like Ashley X has limited value under the western nation state and capitalism. We have a hard time imagining a quality of life for her that doesn’t revolve around her parents’ experiences. She doesn’t have the capacity to “produce” under the capitalist framework and so her agency is taken from her and placed within the medical industrial complex.

In her book Feminist, Queer, Crip Alison Kafer discusses both how time works differently for disabled people and how narratives around time are constructed around ability/disability in order to reinforce normative ideas of futurity and the medical model in which disability is addressed in the US/western global world, as well as the ways in which these narratives are projected onto disabled bodies. This brings together what she calls crip theory. She uses Ashley X (“The Ashley Treatment) as an example to demonstrate how this works. Ashley X was born with a disability that prevented her mind from maturing past infancy despite the growth of her body. Her parents worked with doctors to insist that surgical intervention was necessary (despite having a healthy body) in order to prevent the gap from widening between Ashley’s mind and body and this largely involved halting her reproductive growth by performing sterilization through a hysterectomy and hormone therapy. The only future they could envision for Ashley was one that was convenient for her caretakers. In the documentary we watched in class about parents taking care of their children with similar disabilities, one mother states “If my life is easier, his life is easier,” thus setting the disabled body against the conditions of ableism (the framework that holds ablebodiedness as the norm). Ashley’s treatment and the testimonies of the parents in the documentary reflect larger curative narratives around disability that exists within the medical (and dominant cultural) model of disability. The narrative is that in order for disabled people/bodies to have a future or place in the future is through cure and if they can’t be fully cured, then medical intervention is still necessary to make them as “cured” as possible. Instead of looking at the ways in which society produces barriers to these lives and bodies, this sets up the individual’s disability as the barrier that prevents them from participating in life. This also reinforces ideas of whiteness. The folks who have access to the money and resources that allow medical intervention to happen (and those who are given fame and held up as the example for ideal “cure”) are those with privilege to healthcare, good paying jobs, free time (vacation time) to go to doctors appointments, etc. People of color often times don’t have access to these resources.

I was also really intrigued by both Annie Segarra’s discussion on identity formation as well as Simi Linton’s take on passing. Passing is a concept I’ve been focused on for a while, given my experience as a non-passing queer/trans person. Thinking about the ways in which I pass under an ableist framework was challenging for me (as it is every time I’m confronted with privilege that contradicts my experience with violence (both state and interpersonal) in the past. However, this challenge is important in coming to the question of how passing influences our own identity formation. If we’re conditioned to think about identity and our relationship to the world based on our ability to “function” within the capitalist, neoliberal, patriarchal, heteronormative, white supremacist framework of our world, then of course it would influence the way we think of ourselves. For example, I am a non-passing queer. Regardless of how I identify, if I were in a relationship with a woman, it would be seen as a gay relationship. This is a large reason of why I do identify as queer (rather than just gay or straight, as opposed to some of my trans friends). I can’t ignore the social consequences of my own appearance, not even in my own identity. On the other hand, I do have PTSD and asthma as well as other chronic fatigue exacerbated by an undiagnosed thyroid condition. To me, these are very personal since they aren’t necessarily visible and so I don’t often disclose that information. As I said in class, I would say I’m a person with asthma rather than an asthmatic person (vs the fact that I identify as a queer person rather than a person who’s queer). I hadn’t really thought about this until I saw Annie’s video in class after having read Linton’s piece.

 As for Carol Hanisch’s discussion of the sentiment, there are things I agree with and things I disagree with. For example, her assertion that therapy for women is offensive and that women are simply “messed over”, not “messed up” (Hanisch). I love her play on words and her challenge that declining mental health as the result of chronic marginalized stress is simply an individual problem rather than an issue of a larger, cultural problem. “Messed over” is a great way to politicize the specific forms of anxiety and depression that marginalized people (in this case, women) experience. On the other hand, therapy can be an excellent political and personal tool (ha). How can we lead and create a healthier society if we are hindered by our own issues and traumas? Without effectively addressing these chronic mental health issues in ways that really confront the root of our stunted growth (something few of us can do without professional help), we cannot move forward. Depression, anxiety, trauma, etc. affect all aspects of our relationships and thus our ability to build community.

 I absolutely loved Angela Davis’s “Women, Race, and Class: The Approaching Obsolescence of Housework: A Working-Class Perspective.” I’ve observed the different attitudes towards domestic labor and other forms of labor that were constituted as more “valid” and/or “difficult”. My dad worked in a factory and my mom was a stay at home mother until I was a teenager when she got work as a “lunch lady” and childcare worker. My parents were working the same amount of hours but my mom made less and so my dad assumed that certain labors in the household should still fall under her responsibility rather than splitting them. This did and still does drive me nuts—many arguments were had over the subject. Angela Davis’s analysis of domestic labor within a capitalist framework was mind-blowing for me (also loved the Engles shout-out). (Davis 1981) 

Davis, Angela, 1981. “Woman, Race, and Class: The Approaching Obsolescence of Housework: A Working-Class Perspective.” The Woman’s Press. London, England. 

I was, however, extremely surprised to find that Sojourner Truth was disabled. Our historical memory of influential figures is rigged to connote certain images/feelings/etc. It’s such a disservice to history and to Truth herself in erasing that part of her. I think it would also be a disservice to focus her entire contributions and life around her disability but I do think that by talking about her disability, we reframe the way we think of concepts like “service”, “history”, “memory”, worthiness”, etc. (Minister, 2012). I was shocked to know that her “Ain’t I a Woman” wasn’t an original despite its popularity. I don’t know what to think of the popular piece given the lack of documentation around the original and the fact that Truth’s own opinion wasn’t preserved as far as I can tell. 

With that in mind, I was very excited to read Weiss’ “Intro to Feminist Manifestos”. I’m a student activism and a large part of my activism is the publication and distribution of zines which I consider similar to manifestos. Weiss’ argument for the importance of captivating and exhibiting feminist manifestos really spoke to my activism and the passion I have for it. I also love studying archives and so her essay recounts similar questions that those of us conducting feminist research come across when researching archives. Who’s voices are being displayed and who’s are lost/erased to time? What narratives does this create around the ways we live our lives? I really enjoyed this piece and thought it informed my criticism/analysis of the Stanton and Truth piece. (Weiss)

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1848) “Declaration of Rights and Sentiments.”

Meredith Minister. 2012. “Female, Black, and Able: Representations of Sojourner Truth and Theories of Embodiment.” Disability Studies Quarterly 32 (1).

Penny A Weiss, Intro to Feminist Manifestos