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Kristin's picture

Mairs

Rereading Nancy Mairs this week, I discovered that I still find her writing about disability compelling (a decade after first reading this book) but I was also struck by how heteronormative her assumptions are. Scholars and activists working in disability studies and disability rights often point out that people who are enlightened about diversity when it comes to gender, race, and class make all kinds of benighted assumptions about disability. For example, they fail to see disability as an experience that involves identity, diversity, and rights (not one that simply elicits pity and charity). Nancy Mairs knows a great deal about disability, but I wish she were more attentive to diversity in gender and sexuality. It's a reminder to me that we need to be persistently curious about other subjectivities, other perspectives, other experiences.   

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