Abstract
There is a very strong trend in American culture to impute fixed, stable, and universal properties to a wide range of behaviors and conditions, thereby essentializing their qualities and locating them within nature. Both persons with disabilities and queers have been designated as nature's deviants. The author explores parallels and points of divergence in the responses of both disability rights and queer rights activism and scholarship to this assigned classification. She further illuminates this exploration by drawing upon insights derived from growing up with a congenital disability. As a child, the author felt that her body was a “text” composed, crafted, and edited by those who had the power to manipulate it. Recently, she entered a lesbian relationship, and together she and her partner planned a commitment ceremony that allowed her to reclaim her own body, because the body of the “text” that ensued was one of their own creation.
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Colligan, S.E. Wherein Lie the “Secrets of Life”?: An Argument Against Biological Essentialism. International Journal of Sexuality and Gender Studies 4, 73–85 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1023206524922
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1023206524922