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Disability

(rather long) summary of My body, My Closet:Invisible disability and the limits of coming out by Ellen Samuels

ndifrank's picture

Ellen Samuels sets out to " queer disability".  Critques Swains idea that homosexuality and disability in general have a lot in common because people  from either or both communities experience a coming out process in that society assumes that everyone is straight and able bodied until told otherwise. Samuels find that Swain' and Cameron's anaolgy is that "coming out" is implied to be a single event when it may be an action, self acceptance, or political shift. Samuels talks about how people with non visable disabilities and non heterosexual people both share the ability to "pass". There is a privilege that people with non visable disabilities have because of their ability to be able to assimulate.

Crip time in practice

abby rose's picture

The more I learn about crip time, the more necessary it seems to practice. Yet I struggle to understand how exactly society (on a larger scale) could actually crip time. Our 360 saw crip time in action at Camphill, where time was incredibly flexible and flowed at a slower place. There were also (seemingly) no expectations as to how people lived their lives over the years: no expectations to have children, find a spouse, buy a home, etc. It was almost as if time was paused at Camphill, or at least normative time. But how realistic is it to carry crip time into larger societies?

Time for Disability Studies and a Future for Crips

abby rose's picture

Disability is highly linked to temporality. For one, "the abled/disabled distinction is neither permanent nor impermeable" (25). People shift in and out of disability over time, and there is no person that is untouched by it. Secondly, disability can distort people's perceptions of time thus affecting their ability to operate within our normative confines of time. Furthermore, disability calls for a flexibility in time whether it be for delays with transportation, mental or physical state, interactions with others or the environment, etc.

Invisibility of Identity

abradycole's picture

Samuel’s essay discusses similarities and differences between non-normative identities. She compares lesbians who present femininely as people with an invisible impairment similar to people with invisible disabilities. One major similarity is the shared trade off of being able to fly under the radar without regular discrimination while also having a harder time joining communities of people with the same identity. Samuel discusses the pressure to prove to the world that you fit into an identity when it’s not immediately clear, and the privilege that comes with not having to prove yourself as anything. She also discusses the act of coming out as anything but an assumed normative identity as a continuous process rather than a static and singular event that takes place and ends. 

Work v. Portrait Work: How intent affects impact of visual representation

Hummingbird's picture

Laura Swanson’s photography plays with the history of portrait photography and disrupts the viewer’s expectations of how to interact with portrait photographs. To explore this, I look at two very different examples of her work: the first is part of her “Anti-Self-Portraits” series, and the second is part of her series of Bryn Mawr and Haverford students following her work on the two campuses two years ago. I argue that the different goals for each series and the different subject matter impact how each may be read, and highlight the ways photographic portraiture has been used to represent people.

My Body, My Closet

Hummingbird's picture

"My Body, My Closet" is about the ways invisible disabilities require a kind of "coming out" similar in some ways to the experiences of those in the LGBT community. Samuels analyzes the different ways coming out can be enacted: as joining (openly) the disability community, as making oneself vulnerable, etc. And she analyzes the way chosing not to come out (or "passing") is read: as "selling out" and assuming normative privileges compared with protecting oneself and avoiding discrimination.

Queer Nondisabled

Sunshine's picture

I love how I read this article from the perspective of Disability Studies, which is a perspective I did not have two months ago. But I think I would be interesting to think about this article from the perspective of somebody in Queer Studies who has no background in Disability Studies. In class we talk about the difference between Impairment and disability, and how an impairment does not have to be 'bad.' But without that backgroud, the connection between disability and sexuality may be taken badly.  What qualifies as an impairment? Is a non-heterosexual identity an impairment?

Response to “Disability and the Justification of Inequality in American History”

smalina's picture

Douglas C. Baynton makes the argument that the disabled identity has been used throughout history to argue both for and against the equality of marginalized groups—disability is either assigned to the marginalized, or the marginalized reject the disabled label in order to justify gains on their part.