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RAB response to Keyword chapter: “Ability” by Kumari Campbell

Isabelle SLeave a comment

Campbell gives a detailed account of how the term “ability” came to be what we now know it as today. It seemed to start as a measurement of what a person was able to do, and usually was legally used to benefit men who owned property. To not be able was to be disabled, and to have less value socially. This disabled term was applied to pretty much everyone other than property owning men. The term would only really be applied directly to people in the late 14th century, where people would be identified as able or disabled. Ability was focused much more on “perfectionability”. Philosophy and science around this time was really focused on the contemplation of what made us human. In the next 200 years or so, we see the expansion of the global market, where ability is now seen as how much a person is able to work, how efficient is the human body and how it could be used for profit. In the 1980’s, we see ability and disability being connected to each other even more, mostly in a negative way. With the development of modern medicine and technology, the definition of ablebodidness grows narrower and narrower, especially as the idea of the able body becomes more compulsory and unattainable (its pretty cool that we see McRuer here too). Campbell finished this off with explaining how the two main parts of ableism are the concept of the normative and the division of the perfected body and the “aberrant” or underdeveloped, the unhuman. She argues that the idea of ableism is important to look at in terms of disability, as well as other marginalized identities seeing as they often also face being categorized under the term “less human”.

Quotations:

“‘Ability’ in the Anglo-Norman world was a legal term tied to capacity to enter into contracts or inherent property” (Kumari Campbell 12).

“Throughout much of pre modern Western history, ability and able-bodiedness referred to a person’s role in the community rather than to a fixed condition”(Campbell 12).

(14th and 15th century) “‘Abled’ as an adjective, described a ‘capable, vigorous and thriving’ person or object”(Campbell 12).

“Key to a system of ableism are two elements: the concept of the normative (and the normal individual); and the enforcement of a divide between a ‘perfected’ or developed humanity and the aberrant, unthinkable, underdeveloped, and therefore not really human” (Campbell 13-14)

Analysis:

When I first read Campbell’s analysis of what able bodiedness is today, where hyperproductivity, physical and mental perfection and constant availability are key factors of the “abled body”, I couldn’t help but think of machines. I found it really ironic when Campbell explained how often the humanity of disabled people would be debated, when meanwhile the definition of what makes an able bodied person was not of a person, but of a profit, or dollar sign; a living factory. The movement towards nondisabled people being valuable only in their ability to work and never fail to come in to work really disturbs me, it makes me think a lot too about universal healthcare and welfare and how retirement works as well. I think that the mentality behind a body being made for labor and hyperproductivity is really damaging to society as a whole, our very views of bodies are being warped and given values based on what they are able to provide labor-wise. It just feels so wrong. Bodies are a rhetoric, they embody rhetoric, they give us the opportunity to experience the world around us. They are vessels for our beings that allow us to perceive the world around us and to be perceived by others, they’re tools for interaction, not tools for someone else to use, for someone else to pass judgement and value upon. This sort of mindset is not only dehumanizing but extremely damaging to humanity as a whole. Not everyone’s bodies are the same, not everyone experiences the world in the same way, so saying disabled bodies are less valuable because they are visibly different has been and will continue to chip away at our perceptions of others. 

I found it really fascinating to see how the term “abled” has changed throughout history. Campbell does a wonderful job at showing both negative and positive definitions of disability throughout the ages, and you could really see how our present day perception of ability and disability has come from. One thing that really stood out to me was how originally ability was not always in reference to a person, let alone a person’s body. I think that this is where the term started and to now see where it has wound up is really daunting, I hope to learn more in this class about how terminology evolved throughout the ages both within general society and academic circles of the past, and to see how these changes have influenced our present.

Disability Visibility: Last but not Least – Embracing Asexuality by Keshia Scott

Isabelle SLeave a comment

Scott explains her discovery of her asexual identity in this story, and its relationship with her blindness. She explains that she was always the last of her friends to achieve life milestones, and how as an impressionable teenager she had many insecurities and wanted to fit in with her friends. She was surrounded in her teenage years by other disabled people, and her insecurities about her appearance were amplified by her friends’ ideas of what the ideal woman was like. She explores her lack of interest in men and how throughout her life she has felt indifferent about sex. Many of her experiences with men that she recalls consist of groping and sexual harassment, and as she grew older she has felt more anxiety about explaining her life choices: to not be married, have kids, be sexual with other people. 

She details her discovery of pleasuring herself and the term asexual. She had a conversation with a classmate who said, “disabled people are either asexual or hypersexual” (126), and at first she was taken aback by the blatant ableism in this discussion. Later, she did more research about asexuality and realized that she had the wrong idea in her head about what asexuality was. Now she uses the term and has talk some friends and family about her identity.

At the end she explains her happiness with her independent life. That she is at grad school and many of her friends have taken different paths in life. At the end she explains, “The thought of sex is still uninteresting to me, the thought of having kids is still unpaltable to me, and still, all the time, learning what it is to be a woman, with all that this entails. I look forward to what happens next. And every day I’m still smiling.” (128)

There is a lot in Scott’s writing about the connections between disability and asexuality, which I found overlapped with a lot of what the keywords reading also talked about, that queerness and disability often go hand in hand. Howveer, what Scott and many other people in the asexual and disabled communities often points out, the two occur on their own. There is intersectionality to these communities, but they are not one in the same. Scott even discusses this, that she, “ couldn’t bear it if [her] sexuality ended up being determined by disability” (127) Asexuality could often be misdiagnosed as hypoactive sexual desire disorder, and many people on the autism spectrum also face a lot of stigma by often automatically being labelled as asexual. I’ve found too that in the asexual community there was at one point an effort to disconnect asexuality from disorder, but there was also quickly push back against this as asexual people realized that there was overlap in the communities and to try to fully separate them was to disregard disabled asexuals. 

Asexuality is very fluid, with different people falling into different levels of attraction, both sexual and romantic, so seeing Scott’s own detailed account of her relationship with her sexuality was very eye opening to me. And I am glad that she as a disabled asexual has written about her relationship between these two identities.

Keywords for Disability studies, “Sexuality” by Robert McRuer

Isabelle SLeave a comment

The section for the keyword “Sexuality” discusses the connections between sexuality and disability. Specifically, with how queer identities mirror and often overlap with disability. The historical role of queer identities being labeled as disabilities heavily ties into the role of the “abnormal sexuality”, which McRuer explains connects the physical differences of disabled bodies to “abnormal desires”, which results in the abnormal sexuality. (168) There is a stigma around people with “abnormal sexuality” having excessive sexuality, which also contrasts with the stigma of some disabled people being seen as non-sexual people, often being initialized as well. 

McRuer discusses the historical impact that “shock therapy, sterilization, and castration”(168) have had on these communities. McRuer argues that a newer mindset has emerged that discusses alternative sexual experiences, and how this as diverged from a hetersexual/homosexual binary. McRuer quotes Foucault, who “famously insisted: that homosexuality materialized a ‘new species’ of person” (168), and examines how this “new species” would be increasingly regulated by the state for many years. 

The queerness of disability itself has challenged heteronormativity, which McRuer argues almost requires able bodied-ness. McRuer ends the section reflecting on how sexuality has continued to oppress disabled people, “but it has also become a profoundly productive site for intervention, experimentation and transformation”(170). I think this really reflects how in-depth discussion has brought this aspect of disability forward, and how continued discussion and awareness of these topics are vitally important marginalized communities. 

One thing that really resonated with me is connecting queerness to disability. Specifically the author categorized heteronormativity being perpetuating the expectation for the norm to be cishet, allosexual, and able bodied. With LGBTQ+ identities being labeled disabilities throughout history, the connection to sexuality and disability is impossible to deny. I really feel as though the connection between the two could further the destigmatisation of these communities. 

What also really stood out was the discussion of sterilization and the medical attempts to “fix” disabled people, or to prevent them from having children. This is a very horrifying aspect of this discussion, that shows the painful aspects of what dehumanization and othering made people think it was okay to do this to disabled people and reading about it really angered me. 

The authors terminology was also really fascinating, especially with how efficiently McRuer was able to convey such complex concepts. “Abnormal sexuality” to note was a very effective term that is fluid enough to cover both the stigma of excessive sexuality and of reduced sexuality. It was also really eye opening for McRuer to use film and literature from these times that reflect the historical oppression of sexuality in the disabled community. Using examples from William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury (1929) to show an example of a disabled man who is castrated for his disability, as well as using examples of Shakespeare and the movement to show disabled people in a nonsexual light. This also helps really put into perspective the vast timeline of these issues, and how this has been going on for centuries.