Queer Body, Queer Life

In “Undiagnosing Gender,” Judith Butler examines Gender Identity Disorder in the context of the DSM, which diagnoses and medicalizes gender queerness in the context of sexuality. “The regulatory discourse,” Butler says, “takes on a life of its own: it may not actually describe the patient who uses the language to get what he or she wants…” (Butler, 91). The controversy surrounding the diagnoses of GID brings to light a struggle that has valid arguments in both camps: do we diagnose GID as a legitimate disorder in order to allow those with queer gender identification to access the health services they otherwise would not be entitled to if not for a diagnosis? Or do we appreciate autonomy in a way that serves the individual rather than the collective (which could, arguably, benefit the entire trans/queer community – to have medical needs served in the context of pathology). Regardless, I’d argue that the very fact that this question can be presented is a combination of the failing of our medical system and a failing of politics as a whole. Of course, the advancement of queer gender identities will not occur overnight; not in this conservative country. However, the privatized medical system, as it is, serves as nothing but a hindrance to the needs and basic rights of human beings (Butler uses the butch lesbian who desires to get rid of her breasts as an excellent example.)What line is to be drawn? Why is wanting your breasts away any different than wishing your curved nose away via plastic surgery? If it is different, then how? Rhinoplasty is, I guess, considered cosmetic and as far as I know, not covered by insurances, and yet it carries a different kind of rhetoric than breast reduction, and I don’t think this is in question.

“Illness…becomes both the turning point in that life and the unique gift that gives it value” (McRuer, 12).

That statement makes a point about both ability and queer identity: that identity can be defined by the “queerness” of both; by the relative lack of ability when compared with an able, active world, and/or a heteronormative context.

What struck me most in this reading is the almost obvious argument that, in a queer sense, to be handicapped is not to want a distinct autonomy from the “normal” population, but a collective dependence that includes all people, regardless of ability or orientation or gender. The relative importance to society of the individual in this case comes down to their identity as handicapped. They are the hero stories and they are the pitiable occasionally destined to create their own surprising good fortune, but they are never contextualized as a component of normal society, which brings an entirely new element to the “handicapped” relation of “normal” sexualized society. It is a startlingly Foucauldian perspective that we can draw from this; that sexuality is reserved for those with power, for those with “normal” functionality in a heteronormative and able society, and all “other” is decidedly undesirable and possibly queer.