The queered body

Again, we see the binaries: between heteronormative abled, thin, cissexed bodies and the others - the disabled, fat, and trangendered bodies.  


When I worked with developmentally disabled adults, most people were uncomfortable with their sexuality - their parents, other people who worked in the building with us.  We were janitors, and they barely saw us, but my clients were treated like children, not like people in relationships.  They would tell me about their partners, their crushes, and their disappointments over dinner.  Like physically disabled people, they were sexual, whether they acted on it or not (the cloistered ones couldn't).  The "restrictions on sexual behaviors and expressions, characterizations of groups according to stereotypes sexual (or asexual) natures, and sexually related violence"(McRuer, 8), were part of everyday existence.  When one of my coworkers made an inappropriate comment to an able-bodied(minded?) security guard, he was treated not with a reprimand, but a reassignment to an unoccupied building.  More severe consequences than were ever levied on my able-bodied coworker who regularly harassed me.

One night a few months ago, a curiosity about Sandie Crisp led me through queer crip theory and dance.  I only wish I could find the path I went down, through that rabbit hole, into sexualities we pretend we can't see in heteronormative land, "compulsory able-bodiedness and heteronormativity"(McRuer, 13).

A connecting thread is in the Susan Wendell quote in McRuer: "Idealizing the body prevents everyone, able-bodied and disabled, from identifying with and loving his/her real body."  That applies to all of our readings: Fat, trans, and crip, in different ways.


Levy-Navarro rightly points out that fat bodies are loved in other cultures, and that the U.S. winds together racial/ethnic prejudices with anti-fat sentiment, and that this sentiment was starting to rear its head in England in Ben Jonson's time.  "To be fat was to the ruling elite to be vicious, common, and unlearned."(Levy-Navarro, 20)  That hasn't changed much, has it?  Workplace discrimination, healthcare discrimination, and everywhere discrimination are based on the same assumptions.


Wilson brings up a really important perspective: the science is not clear.  To hide behind the correlation between weight and health so as to prop up one's fat prejudice is to ignore the myriad other factors that affect the health of black women, of lesbian women, of people.  To care more for the overall wellbeing of people, rather than pointing the "you're fat" finger at them every time they go near a doctor will result in healthier communities.  


LeBesco brings me right back to my developmentally disabled coworkers in her discussion of eugenics.  The fat gene, the gay gene - those have not yet seen their eugenicist wet-dream ends, but down's syndrome and other causes of developmental and physical disabilities are detectable, and result in high abortion rates.  My children likely won't grow up with school friends who are excited beyond description to read their schoolbag's one word "Enjoy!" as I did.  They may never take notes for the children who are unable to write.  It's sad that we've lessened our diversity that much - and we are asking to take it further, to save people from the torture of being gay, of being fat.  Those things that make us unique are stripped away, one by one, until we are one homogeneous US (not them).  Hell no.


As for Butler, I have a lot more to say on that than I could fit in a page.  I am tempted to expand on it for my presentation, but suffice to say, I think the whole DSM should be thrown out the window, and diversity of mental states should be acceptable.  I had to jump through the psycho-medical hoops to be granted the magical special permission for top surgery, and I think the system is a giant pile of horseshit.  I do take a libertarian stance on this, rather like one of the views she mentioned, especially because we don't have socialized medicine in the U.S. of A.  Friends from other nations can, at least, get somewhere by jumping through the hoops.  I spent a thousand dollars to appease the psychology profession and the medical profession just to get through the door, before I ever started to pay for the surgery.  And there is almost zero coverage by insurers, so there is no benefit to the vast majority of non-gender-conforming people to the current medicalization system.