Eps 3: Non normative bodies
The primary goal of this chapter is to clarify the relationships between disability, medicine, and aesthetics during the Romantic period.
Locating the Wordsworth-Coleridge circle in this medical and conceptual landscape, this chapter highlights the ethical consequences of disability aesthetics.
---. "Unhealthy Disabled: Treating Chronic Illnesses as Disabilities."
Host
Roy Vasquez
Podcast Content
If we want to encourage feminists to include non-normative bodies in our bodies, we need to be aware of the different ways in which people treat their bodies. Feminists have a good goal of body positivity and acceptance, but I do not support policies that promote body shame and negativity. The problem in determining corporate and political objectives is that some corporations appear normal, but cannot match a person's identity.
Fatphobia regulates in a very gender-specific way how our bodies can and cannot look, and in a way that keeps us trapped. I have discussed the experimental use of 'disabled' as a self-definition and claimed that disabled people are a problematic label, but I am also interested in investigating and criticising the mutual misunderstandings that fat and disabled people share.
This suggests that identification as disabled is steeped in political origins, and that disability policy provides an important precedent for fat people. The critical application of this misfit extends from its associated handicap - in theory - to its conditional and fundamental act of human embodiment. When social models, without taking into account the intersectional constitution of the disabled, create a hierarchy of disability in which the able and disabled are given preference over several marginalised people with disabilities, who are restricted by more than one repressive system.
In other words, there is no "fit" for fat people, only a fit for non-fat bodies. This vulnerability is comprised of a number of arcane facts, such as gender, race, age, gender identity, and sexual orientation.
If disability is presented as a disability that is not already influenced by other facets of identity and privilege, then the abnormality discussed above will affect an environment that is not covered by the ADA Access Mandate. This example depoliticizes disability by implicitly treating "misfit" as an individual matter, not a concern, and offers a broader view of accessibility by broadening our understanding of built environments such as buildings and stairs. By portraying an actor's physical and mental health as the main reason for his disability, the show can't just be about disability and disability, but only about the expressed markers that saturate the otherwise privileged bodies of the performers.
After watching this episode, the audience can experience a shift in their own perspective, by conceiving disability as a social construction and actually seeing awareness of assumptions built into physical spaces as new. In the case of the actors, they may even own a house in a non-privileged environment, such as an apartment building.
The problem, however, is that while the programme draws attention to the fact that it creates an environment of inaccessibility for people with disabilities that is consistent with the social model of disability, it does not understand how oppression of the disabled works in the context of a non-privileged environment. People experience disability as a social phenomenon, the resulting and aggravating impairments of which often affect their functioning differently, and this is not a matter of course for any class or race.
GenderForks is a website that provides examples of different gender expressions that are not often available elsewhere, either in photos or quotations, as well as ways to identify with gender variants. It focuses on gender neutral bodies such as trans women and trans men, but also includes people of color, trans and cis people, queer people and people with disabilities. The book is about trans woman, trans man, gender queer and gender - non-conforming people. This includes exercises in the body and love that do not make any special demands on body types, or the recovery of sexuality with the enthusiastic consent model.
In a way, it's transboundary to hear Whitney discuss so transparently the intersection of PCOS and gender in her life and to see her practice intimate and disciplining body practices that women are expected to practice but usually remain hidden from the public. Sandra Lee Bartky's Foucauldian analysis insists that a compliant body is often a feminised body, and that women internalise the patriarchal male gaze through which they look at their own bodies and measure the success of their femininity. Practices that maintain a stereotypical feminine appearance, such as crossing the legs, are generally accepted as entirely voluntary, but are in fact mandatory.
Ultimately, Whitney's beauty routine is never discussed as optional, but is a necessity because she was a young woman and her illness
Nevertheless, the question remains: How do we treat and create differently disabled bodies without making drastic reductions? In a conversation in Vienna in January, Uhlich, who dates back to her early days as a dancer, told me that she was considered physically overweight by the standards of professional dance.