During this class, my peers and I encountered a reading called “Disability as Masquerade” by Tobin Seibers. As I read this piece, I could immediately picture a physical expression of the concept of masquerade and how it interacts with society. So naturally, I had to make my envisioned sculpture. Masquerade as a concept is interesting because it unable to exist without something we rely on socially, culturally, and politically: Normal. Because of its reliance on normal, Masquerade is the perfect place to begin to integrate conversations of Normal Theory into the Disability Lens. Many scholars in disability studies critique how normalcy is used to perpetuate ableism but rarely do focus on what normal is and how it functions. In our discussions in class, we, the authors of this blog, have hit on the idea of deconstructing normal. We have consistently hit a wall when attempting to come up with a way go about deconstructing normal. After some reflection, I could not think of a better place to start deconstructing normal than exploring the relationship between normal, masquerade, passing and society. This discussion inspires you to continue the exploration I started here in your daily life.
Author: Tuesday
Vermon’s Journey
Where I started….
I entered this quarter with no knowledge of Disability Studies but with experience surrounding disability. I had little to no expectations for the content I would encounter. I assumed I would enjoy learning about the discourses surrounding disability. Then we watched “The Kids are Alright” and I remember thinking, “Oh my god! am I an evil, horrible ableist?” I was immediately untrusting of the content and creator which sparked a small internal crisis. At this point, I knew I was in for a bumpy ride the rest of the quarter.
The journey, itself.
I believe about every other week something we discussed in class triggered me. Sometimes I hid it well, other times I think it was obvious I was incredibly upset. This was a class that I either viscerally hated or was enamored with. This is mostly my fault. I engaged with a topic that triggered me repeatedly, sometimes bringing it into readings where it was not present. I am, of course referring to focus of my project, normalcy. I have identified it to be almost the root of evil but also the supporting structure for most things we discussed. This only reinforces my first main takeaway from the quarter, understanding the audience is key to effective communication. There have been a few instances where I have misjudged my audience this quarter. Our discussions in class have made me more conscious of how “[a] message changes or gets lost very easily depending upon the audience” and my way of approaching my intended audience. I tend to dedicate a lot of energy to considering my audience’s needs, agenda, and values. I dedicate even more energy towards this as learned I need to consider a potentially unintended audience. There has have been a couple issues such as Masquerade, Prosthesis, and language that have highlighted that occasionally it is the unintended audience who hold more power over the discourse or situation surrounding an issue than the intended audience. Thus, it is negligent to just simply ignore a potentially unwanted interpretation of your message. This is also why contextualization is important, especially when engaging critically with a text. As demonstrated by anything written by Dolmage, context is vital when dealing with abstract concepts. In a particularly comedic moment, I gave another classmate a quote with a contextualizing sentence attached to help them interpret an abstract sentence. I had wanted to hear someone else’s thoughts on the concept he was referring as it seemed very out place in his rhetorical flow. They asked for context. I had thought I had given context, but it was not enough. To be honest I am not sure I could have given this classmate anymore context because the context I gave was all I had myself.
Arriving at the Destination.
I am happy the journey is over. I am really exhausted. It was a fun but tiring trip. Lastly, I want to touch back upon “The Kids are Alright”. My concern over holding abelist veiws was not unwarrented. It would be odd if I did not hold some abelist veiws because I have grown up in a violently abelist society. This is something we all will have to struggle against and engage in self-critique to overcome.
Brown, Keah, “Nurturing Black Disabled Joy”
Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from The Twenty-First Century, edited by Alice Wong, Vintage, June30th, 2020. (pp. 117-120)
Summary:
Brown starts by explaining her relationship with joy and how society expects her relationship to joy to be. She explains that disabled people are expected to not feel positive emotion, making anytime she experience joy much more profound. Brown is a disabled woman of color, a person often excluded from representations of disability. She discusses how she aims to decentralize the notions of heterosexuality and whiteness that are often associated with the disabled community. Sometimes her efforts such as the viral hashtag, #DisabledandCute, have been criticized as inspiration porn. Brown maintains that her efforts good outweighs the harm as they make POC and LGBTQ+ members of the disability community more visible. Basically, she is validating her and others’ existences in a society that had been actively erasing tor ignoring them. She concludes by acknowledging that she has not always being able to feel joy, but she has had to fight to feel her current joy.
Quotes:
“So my joy –the joy of professional and personal wins, of pop culture and books, of expressing platonic love out loud — is revolutionary in a body like mine.” Pp.117
“Instead, they think of cis white male wheelchair users who hate themselves, because that is so often the pop culture depicts us.” Pp.118
“I championed the act of effort and patience with myself by forcing myself to reroute negative thoughts with positive ones. Instead of saying what I hated about myself, I spoke aloud what I liked about myself.” Pp.119
Reflection:
Brown efforts are very admirable. I think finding joy is something a lot of people are struggling with. I really like that she chose to continue pushing forward with her projects despite criticism. This sounds very basic, but it takes a strong person to do this, even without the added social and cultural pressures of being part of multiple minorities. Brown is focusing mostly on the positives which I consider a smart move, when rallying for change. It keeps those involved in the movement engaged and energized. She does not promote ignorance of any negative aspects of the disabled community and disabled rights movement which allow a healthy movement to flourish. It is important to be reflective but hopeful when advocating for social change.
Thornton Sr., Ricardo T., “We Can’t Go Back”
Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from The Twenty-First Century, edited by Alice Wong, Vintage, June30th, 2020. (pp. 85-89)
Summary:
Ricardo Thornton begins by introducing himself and his purpose, to represent the ninety-two thousand institutionalized people with intellectual disabilities. Thornton explains that he grew up in institutions with a special focus on Forest Haven, an institution where his siblings and wife were placed. He takes the time to explain how the institution residents were controlled and denied independence. For example, he was never told his siblings were in the same facility or that he had siblings while in Forest Haven. Thornton was one of the first people to be allowed to leave Forest Haven. He remarks on the surrounding community’s attitude toward the former Forest Haven residents, unwelcoming and hostile. Thornton moved into a group home where he began dating his wife and worked to establish himself. Thornton reflects upon doubt and discouragement he received throughout his life, most people believing he could not be a functional member of society. He states this is the reason he advocates for institutionalized people; He wants to give them a voice because he knows that they are denied their own voices. He acknowledges the changes that have been made and presses that we cannot go back to institutional structures of the past. He concludes that segregating people based upon intellectual abilities is only harmful and the only reason he stands before the audience is because people believed in his potential. He leaves the audience with the task of protecting and giving the people still in institutions the chance to grow.
Quotes:
“Segregating People is always bad; people never grow in [institutions]and are safer and happier in the community.” Pp.89
“We can’t go back to a time when people are moved against their will to places where they have n opportunities to learn, grow and contribute.” Pp.88
“…I didn’t get to think for myself. The staff thought for me and made all of my decisions.” Pp.85
Reflection:
This made me cry.
I am more familiar with intellectual disabilities than any other category of disability, so this speech hit a bit close to home. The interesting thing here is Thornton is not using any novel arguments. I have seen his main point hundreds of times before, but the fact that it needs to be made still is heartbreaking. While we as a culture/society have improved our awareness and treatment of mental differences, People like Thornton still need to fight to be seen as deserving of a life. Though He never explicitly stated this, I feel like the central message of this piece was “there is a difference between being alive and living”. Being alive is not enough. The person who is just being kept alive is being robbed of their person-hood and that is just a step away from killing them. Why is that okay?
The Major Project so far…
My project is a visual and touch focused exploration of how identity, society and Masquerade interact. My concept is a three-layered decorative mask, in which each layer addresses an aspect of a person’s identity and how they present this layer. As planned, currently, only one mask layer out of three is constructed and I am prepping to finish the others in the next couple of days. My main concern is the size of the masks and the dialog. I started constructing the mask with the first layer to ensure I had the room to work on details and to accurately estimate the size of the whole mask. However, the first layer ended up taller than I expected meaning all the layers will be larger than I originally planned. This will make finding the appropriate container more difficult.
As for the dialogs, I am nervous to write them. I tend to not write creatively well, and the dialogs will require some creative writing. The dialogs should lend themselves well to the audio requirements of the major project, so I will not abandon them, something I had started to consider. Honestly, this project does not feel like a class project, but more like something I decided to make for my own enjoyment. My main take away from this project is “I should do things like this more often”. Admittedly, I chose a project that heavily involves my main hobbies so any work I do on the project is incredibly enjoyable. I am hoping to keep this pace up, so I only have the finishing details left to add after the upcoming fall break.
Photos of the first layer:
I am waiting to add colors until the other layers are completed.
Adding a personal touch to the Disability Rights Movement,”Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution
To begin “Crip Camp”, the viewers are introduced to a cast of colorful people all who attended or worked at Camp Jened. The cast is comprised mostly of people with disabilities so they offer a rarely seen view on the 1960s and 1970s. Each cast member gives their accounts of their time at the camp, not at camp and how it impacted their views on life. The film transitions to focus on the campers’ life after the camp, in particular the community they had become for each other. Many of the campers were in the frontlines the Disability rights movements allowing the viewer to get a more in-depth view of the protests for the enforcement of the Architectural Barriers Act. A while providing examples of why it was necessary. The film provides context and details for a not necessarily informed audience well, making it a good introduction to the disability rights movement. The use of personal narratives allows more complex issues for the disabled community, such as access, independence, and sexuality, to be shown in way that person with no background knowledge in disability studies can digest. “Crip Camp” is a great guiding piece when introducing the fight for Disability rights to a new audience. It hooks the viewer with personal details, sometimes employing nostalgia to invest the viewer but the film does not rely too heavily on this tactic. It remains relatable to both a younger and older demographic, making perfect to introduce disability studies to older teenagers.
The films central message discusses how inclusion and exclusion affect the lives of disabled people. The start of the film is sets up view of the campers’ lives in a place where they felt included, where they had access to live life. One camper is makes a remark about never being sidelined at Camp Jened, relating to a broader aspect of access,” linked to a more inclusive society with greater opportunities for social and political participation (pp.15),” as put by Bess Williamson in Keywords for Disability Studies. Williamson asserts that the issue of access has two distinct facets that occasionally limit each other, one the access to be a citizen, to be a person and the other to have the ability to enter and move about a space(pg.14-15). The films central conflict the occupation of the San Francisco federal offices, Highlights the fact that physical access allows people to access their citizenship and personhood, but first they need to be seen as person by those limiting their access. The film overcomes this barrier easily by displaying the person first then calling for better access.
The film is most suited for an audience who has passed their late teen or is actively in their late teens. There are a couple points in the film that would need to be skipped due to graphic language, but for the most part they are not central scenes to main conflict of the film, they are just a couple of many scenes humanizing the campers. Due to nature of film’s topic a certain level of maturity and care is needed in the audience to get the full extent of the film’s message. That being said, for people to grow into this film’s ideal audience, showing them “Crip Camp” and discussing it with them is great step to take. I do urge any teachers thinking of showing “Crip Camp” to consider their classes and what type of discussion would be the most productive for their class. “Crip Camp” is a film with layers and certain groups may attach to one layer over the others, so any discussion or viewing should not be structured like a one size fits all. Also some background information on the ADA, ABA and early disability rights movements may be necessary to contextualize parts of the film. 4/5
referenced sources:
Willianson,Beth, “Access” ,Keywords for Disability Studies. Edited by Adams, R.Serlin, D., & Serlin, D. H. (2015). NYU Press. pp.14-17
Major Project Proposal
Tentative title:
“Wardrobe of Masks”– a visual for the interaction of passing and masquerading in relation to identity and society
Central Issue:
How do different societal interactions affect one’s expression of identity? My Exploration will mainly focus on the impact outside perspectives have on personal expression when it comes to disability intersecting another minority status. In particular, I plan to investigate potential reasons for changes and hierarchy in performances.
Product Design:
Drawing inspiration from Tobin Seibers’ “Disability as Masquerade”, the product will be a literal mask. This is partially to evoke the idea of masking, a term referring to passing in the Nuerodivergent spheres, and to directly reference what Seibers refers to as ‘Masquerade’. The mask will have three to four layers, each layer representing a different community and the fictional mask wearer’s performance of identity in that community. Underneath all the masks, though still in the works, the mask wearer’s actual face will be represented by sculpted creature. I am reserving the right to change how the core person is represented. To help enrich the different masks, I plan to reference quite a few chapters from Visibility Disability in each layer. At the moment, I am still deciding on my other major sources for the overall final product. These sources will probably impact how I display the masks. They also might impact the dialog which I plan to write to represent interactions between the masks.
I also think it will be fun to play with an idea that people change up their performance like clothes depending on the situation. This may result in the masks being stored in a box made to look like a wardrobe or closet. This will probably be where the dialogs will be displayed.
Production Plan:
Week 1(11/1-11/7): Gather materials, finalize main sources.
Week 2(11/8-11/14): Start constructing the masks, and draft the thematic dialog, meet with Andrew to review project so far.
Week 3(11/15-11/21): Finish constructing the bases of the masks, have completed drafts of all dialog.
Week 4(11/22-11/28): review dialog drafts (other people besides myself), start adding the finishing touches to each mask.
Week 5(11/29-12/5): add final details, complete any last minute changes.
Consultation:
Ideally, the meeting would be in the earlier stages of the project, before a structure has been fully committed to. The Masks will take some effort to make and there will point where I cannot make any changes to a layer without remaking the whole layer. Ideally I would like to meet on November 10th as I will probably have not started making the masks, but will have completed the bulk of my research. I would like to know if there are any other sources on passing or similar to the readings we have done by Dolmage. I think readings more focused on general themes rhetoric surrounding disability would work well in informing the dialogs’ structure and content.
Citations:
Kuppers, Petra. “performance”, Keywords for Disability Studies. Edited by Adams, R., Serlin, D., & Serlin, D. H. (2015). NYU Press.
O’Toole, Corbett Joan. “Celebrating Crip Bodyminds” Fading Scars: My Queer Disability History, 1st ed., Autonomous Press, June 9th, 2015, pp.13-53
Dolmage, Jay. Disability Rhetoric. First edition., Syracuse University Press, 2014(. Pp.93-125)
Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories From The Twenty-First Century, edited by Alice Wong, Vintage, June30th, 2020.
Sinclair, Jim. “Don’t Mourn for Us”
Summary:
Sinclair begins by addressing the way Autism is typically viewed, as a tragedy. This is how Sinclair sets up the scene for the rest of xyr message. Sinclair focuses upon the fact that many parents view and treat autism as an illness that is hindering their child from being ‘normal’. This is not the case. Autism is part of their child and by mourning the child’s condition, the parents are alienating their child. Sinclair argues that it is the parents’ treatment of the child that prevents them from connecting and bonding with them. It is the parents inhibiting the relationship. Having a child is not something parents typically expect but it is something they need to be willing to work with. This is their child, still. Sinclair closes xyr letter by inviting the reader, parents of autistic children, to accept, support and join in their children’s life,
“I wish the autistic child I have did not exist, and I had a different (non-autistic) child instead.” Pp.1
“You didn’t lose a child to autism. You lost a child because the child you waited for never came into existence.” Pp.3
“But I know it’s a child, stranded in an alien world, without parents of its own kind to care for it. It needs someone to care for it, to teach it, to interpret and to advocate for it.” Pp.4
Reflection:
This will be fairly short. I do not much to say about Sinclair’s writings, except xe is right. I think what was said in Don’t Mourn for Us goes for all parents. You should never enter parenthood expecting your child to be just like you. They are a person. They will have different opinions, likes, dislikes, and way of thinking, their own personality. They are all ‘alien’. Autistic children are not that different from non-autistic children, they all need to be supported and guided by parents who accept them for who they are. I think I would personally change the audience of this letter to include the autistic child’s peers, because at the end of the day we are not just raised by our parents.
Adults ruin a lot of things…this is one of them.
Johnson, Harriet McBryde, “Unspeakable Conversations”
Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from The Twenty-First Century, edited by Alice Wong, Vintage, June30th, 2020. (pp. 3-27)
Summary:
The author, Harriet McBryde Johnson, starts her narrative by dropping the reader right into the central conflict of her story. She is at Princeton giving a presentation and participating in an ethical debate against Peter Singer, a well-known Animal rights Supporter and Utilitarian philosopher. Johnson is there to counter Singer’s arguments for selective infanticide. This is not the first time these two intellectuals have gone head-to-head, the first time they engaged in open discourse being in 2001 over disability-based killings and assisted suicide. Despite Singers subscription to veganism and animal rights narratives, Singer strongly supports the killing of disabled people, a group Johnson belongs to. Johnson’s story while featuring some of the argument exchanged between her and Singer is not focused upon the content of their debates. Instead, she focuses upon the how the discussion was conducted. Most of the chapter is spent discussing how Johnson felt overwhelmed by the unfamiliar environment she had entered during each debate. Her being out of her element garnered her criticism from fellow disability rights activists and lawyers. Johnson describes how she felt guilty and foolish for even engaging with Singer. She describes how she entered her interactions expecting Singer to be discourteous and view her as less than human, only to be shocked when he did not. At one point, Johnson describes Singer as the “Evil One”. Her interactions challenge her ability to hold this view of Singer. The most notable feature of the chapter is Johnson and Singer’s interactions. They both act with grace and treat each other like other humans, there is a respect between them. This surprised Johnson and leads into the larger realization of the chapter, though she cannot agree with Singer’s world view she can not disregard Singer’s humanity. Johnson ends the chapter by extending this sentiment to other’s who see her existence as miserable and declares her intent to keep fighting against ableist rhetoric.
Quotes:
“I shouldn’t shake hands with the Evil One.” Pp.8
“… I have been sucked into a civil discussion of whether I ought to exist, I can’t help but be dazzled by his verbal facility.” Pp.9 (This is a section where the whole paragraph is solid gold. Harriet Johnson’s emotional turmoil over the debate is highlighted very well.)
“I realize I must put one more issue on the table: etiquette.” Pp.13
“I feel like an animal in the zoo. I hadn’t reckoned on the architecture, those tiers of steps that separate me from a human wall of apparent physical and mental perfection, that keep me confined down here in my pit.” Pp.16
“I can’t live with a definition of ultimate evil that encompasses all of them. I can’t refuse the monster-majority basic respect and human sympathy.” Pp.26
Reflection:
Before I go into my thoughts on the essay I would look to establish that I find most of what Singer says to be offensive. He reminds me of a typical theorist, stuck in their version of the world struggling to fully put themselves into reality. But I can not in good faith say I find all of Johnson’s points convincing. To me both sides have flaws, but Johnson’s side is more appealing and fosters more understanding. All the issues I have with Johnson’s arguments are minute compared to the issues I find with Singer’s. I will end by saying I understand how he reaches the conclusions he does, but that not make them right.
I do not think the ethical debates discussed in this entry of Disability Visibility should be focused upon too heavily. While they are very important conversations, I do not think they are major take away from the narrative put forth by Johnson. For a while now the internet has been the home of the war between the “leftists” and the “anti-SJWs”. I do not know if these are what either group currently identifies as, but they engage in a similar debate culture to the one described by Johnson. I am not talking about the idea of debating an ethical/moral issue in a public forum. I am talking about the idea that to engage with the other side is to be a fool and secede more ground than one should. I think Johnson does a wonderful job in illustrating how this mindset looks and feels. This view tends to inhibit progress quite a bit and requires a considerable amount of personal reflection to overcome. I think the internal and external conflict Johnson describes is a good place to jump off into an examination of a grey world view. Recently most of the discussions I have seen strongly suggest one side is right and the other has little to offer, in other words a black and white world view. Johnson is openly acknowledging that perspectives flaws. This is also the first time the word “evil” has been used explicitly. I will make the disclaimer that I do not believe any author we have read has thought of society as evil but combined they do paint a narrative where society is ableist and is sort of evil for being ableist. It is hard to express how this affects the audience and the exigence’s palatability. If I had to explain it, I would say defining one side as evil and the other as good injects a rot into the conversation so no one can benefit from the interaction. To be clear, this explanation toes the line of respectability politics and is lacking in nuance. It is important to realize rhetoric is a two-way street, often the rhetor is the unwilling audience to the audience and audience an unknowing rhetor. The audience will either affirm or deny the rhetor’s message. In Johnson and Singer’s discourse, they have a literal audience in the students watching, but they are each other’s main audience. Their discourse extends past the staged debate to more personal interactions. We as a third party will probably never know the actual results of these discussions, but we can assume the effect on Johnson was a blurring between good and evil. These interactions also reaffirm her path to her, which I appreciate. I am glad that she was able to take this experience, use it as motive and grow from it. I think this is what the outcome of all discourse should ideally be.
Back to the root: Identity
Section 1: Impersonal — Larger Context
Disability is becoming a broader term by the minute. The line between the disabled bodymind and the abled bodymind is blurrier every day. Disability studies seems to be working to create the disability lens, the outlook I hold responsible for this confusion. The Disability lens is a way to look at, to break down the everyday world with respect to how it interacts with disability. It is my belief that the construction of “lens” is the purpose of disability studies. One cannot add to the “lens”, expand the “lens” without some introspection and investigation into the disabled experience. Many would also stress the importance of knowing how to apply this “lens”. I think we apply lenses instinctually as we learn about the new lens. Discussion about the system of society and the variable Disability give insight on how the lens works. No one person will uniformly use the disability lens, but there are overlapping methods. The most blatant application is using language, a mode of communication unique to communities and cultures. Most traditional or formal language surrounding disability have a medical origin which often perpetuates an ableist culture. The medical disability lexicon had and has very little input from the people living with disability, causing that lexicon to be unable to accurately express disabled experience well. Many disabled communities have turned to create new terminology which better facilitates use of the disability lens. As put by Simi Linton, “This new language conveys different meanings, and, significantly, the shifts serve as metacommunications about the social, political, intellectual, and ideological transformations that have taken place” (9). Ultimately Disability Studies is about deconstructing the default experience in society in favor of spotlighting a periphery experience. This benefits all participants in society as the process undertaken through disability studies leads to a critique of “normal” which very few people benefit from.
Section 2: Interpersonal — Narrowing the Focus
Moving forward, I want to spend a bit more time focusing on coping methods. I need to clarify this a bit. When I say coping methods, I am particularly referring to the search for community or the avoidance of community. Most people seem to search for community as a way to alleviate stress or discomfort, a way to feel safe. But what about community inspires this sense of safety? Are there instances in which community is actually harmful? Does it deviate in any meaningful way from society at large or is everyone just similar in experience? Is that a meaningful deviation? I would find some exploration into interpersonal communications and identity enlightening as a person who has always struggled to feel support from or attachment to people. It boggles my mind how people can just seemingly join a community and feel strength.
I also hope that we can as a group, the other authors on this blog and I, can reach a tentative definition of disability. With a less nebulous sense of disability, we could probably refine how apply the disability lens. Honestly, maybe further constructing and exploring the disability will help us come up with an agreed upon definition of disability. I think that it would also be able to add more cultural views to the discourse. We are heavily focusing on the US and Canada limiting our view of larger ableist trends and ways to fight ableist narratives. Gaining a solid idea of what disability truly is will help us break down tropes in representation.
I apologize to my fellow authors if this is aggressive. However, I think we speak with a considerable amount of trust that our points are being understood. This is highly unlikely. There have been several instances in which all of us are missing the others’ point. To remedy this, I would like to bring a bit more focus to the larger context behind issues we discuss. I think this will help us establish a base line. I have noticed that the times when points do land are instances when an author gives context to their reasoning and conclusions. I do not think we are examining why these behavior patterns and viewpoints exist nearly enough. How can we understand what is happening without examining all sides and angles? The short answer is we cannot. I am aware I am promoting the inclusion of systems thinking in future discussions, but I believe we will be able to gain more meaningful outcomes from our discussions. I also acknowledge that not all of us may have bac ground knowledge in systems thinking.
Section 3: Personal — My Highlights.
Desirability:
The world can be classified into two categories what is desired and what is not. This is the framework for concepts such as attraction, beauty, and acceptance. If something is deemed desirable in some aspect it is more easily accepted, considered beautiful and sought after. This is the crux of ableism. An able bodymind is desired because it is convenient, requiring little effort to navigate culture, social situations, and the physical world. This is only the case because an able bodymind is considered the default and something the majority possess. I believe we downplay the amount of people who identify having a disability. According to the CDC, approximately one in for adults in the US report to having at least one disability. Another consideration is disability is higher in minority populations due to socioeconomic factors which already classify those minorities as undesirable in some way. This leads to It is important to note that this just the portion of the population that will report having a disability. Many times, if a disability is maskable or not blatantly detrimental, the person with this condition will not identify the condition as a disability. This does not mean that it is not impacting their life. But why would they hide or ignore something that is impacting them in such a horrible way? The answer is complex dealing with older social structure such as “Aesthetic values were often used to define in those “lives worth not living”…”(29, Keywords), stigmas surrounding mental health and identity confusion. Aesthetics are based upon desirability and are not limited to the physical. There is such a concept as an aesthetic mindset or school of thought.
Imposter Syndrome:
Have you met the standard to be considered part of this community? Will you be able to? Imposter is an almost fatal disease. It is a fight every day to overcome and often it stops people from reaching out for help. It has mental and physical ramifications. Yet it is rarely acknowledged. We only hear stories where the imposter syndrome is overcome. I have burgeoning theory that imposter syndrome is the outcome when a counter community begins to closely mirror the original norm. The outcome of a standard that excludes individuals it should in theory encompass. A person can feel like they are not disabled enough, like they do not deserve to be leading their research on subatomic particles because they do not look the part of a Physicist, or even that they are not a true parent. This is the case of Jessica Slice, a mother with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome which impairs her movement from time to time. “When people talk about Parenting … I can chime in, but a part of me feels like an imposter” (129) she states, and later continues to explain that the cause of this feeling is her inability to move as well as her son. It is a set of capacities she had been told a mother should have that was preventing her from fully identifying as a parent. This example illustrates the main issue with imposter syndrome, if you struggle to feel the sense of validation from an identity is it really your identity or an identity forced upon you?
Intersecting Identity:
Firstly, lets breakdown a working definition of identity. Taking the definition given by Julia Rodas in Keywords for Disability Studies, “Identity is the idea of the self which is understood within and against social context…” (103). In almost all chapters form Disability Visibility multiple identities have been brought up next to disability. Nearly every author focuses on an identity outside of their disability. This is a discussion that is not well developed in the sense it has not been centrally focused upon. However, intersectionality has made a cameo in every discussion we, the authors, have engaged with so far. This leads me to believe it is a necessity to consider. Every person consists of multiple versions of themselves, highlighting certain aspects over others, that they use interact with the world around them. Is it too much of an assumption to say that the true person is an amalgamation of these different selves, different identities? As O’Toole observes, “Each of [O’Toole’s public identity related] circles intersect in [their] life but rarely do these circles interact with each other. Each of these circles contain people who are parts of many other circles such as Black people, working people, etc” (38), identities tend to be kept separate. I believe that this may be due to conflicting interests and consolidating a war to individual battles. It is hard to focus on fighting against racial prejudice, homophobia, and/or ableism all at once, while making progress. However, there is a time where we need to focus on how a person’s identities combine and shape that person’s experiences.
Works used:
Disability Visibility:
Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories From The Twenty-First Century, edited by Alice Wong, Vintage, June30th, 2020.
Keywords:
Adams, Rachel, David Serlin, and David H Serlin. Keywords for Disability Studies. Keywords. New York: NYU Press, 2015.
O’Toole, Corbett Joan. “Celebrating Crip Bodyminds”, Fading Scars: My Queer Disability History, 1st ed., Autonomous Press, June 9th, 2015, pp.13-53