Compulsory Able-Bodiedness and Queer/Disabled Existence
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CHAPTER27 CompulsoryAble-Bodiedness and Queer/DisabledExistence RobertMcRuer SUMMARY When lesbian existence is imagined as a marginal alternative to the centrality of heterosexuality , it reinforces the notion that heterosexuality is naturally dominant. In this essay , Robert McRuer applies Adrienne Rich 's idea about lesbian identity to disability studies . If thinking about lesbian existence reveals " compulsory heterosexuality, " so too can we analyze "compulsory able-bodiedness " from the perspective of disability . Queer and feminist theorists have long critiqued the definition of heterosexuality as "normal relations between sexes" and insisted that homosexuality is subordinated because of the standard of normalcy. Disability studies also draws on critiques of normalcy , as demonstrated by Lennard Davis , and McRuer suggests that able-bodiedness is seen as even more " natural " than heterosexuality. Because able bodiedness is considered a " normal" requirement for life in the industrial capitalist system , having an " able body " becomes compulsory . Like heterosexuality , able-bodied identity is defined by its repeated performances , and McRuer points out that many cultural institutions are dedicated to showcasing these bodily performances . There is a constant need to affirm able-bodied identity because able-bodied norms are in reality impossible to embody, and even the status of being able-bodied is only a temporary part of a human life . Since both queerness and disability have the potential to disrupt the performance of able-bodied heterosexuality , both must be contained and embodied by queer/disabled figures that "can be tolerated" in popular imagination. McRuer argues that like being "critically queer ," being " severely disabled " can foster a sharp critique of compulsory able-bodiedness . He suggests that the commonly marginalized bodies are the best positioned to refuse the " mere toleration " that keeps those bodies at the margins. CONTEXTUALIZING DISABILITY ways in which lesbian identities are made visible (or, we might say, comprehensible) In her famous critique of compulsory as on the ways in which they are made heterosexuality Adrienne Rich opens with invisible or incomprehensible. She writes: the suggestion that lesbian existence has often been "simply rendered invisible" (178), Any theory of cultural/political creation that but the bulk of her analysis belies that treats lesbian existence as a marginal or less rendering. In fact, throughout "Compulsory "natural" ph enomenon, as mere "sexual pref Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence," one erence," or as the mirror imag e of either of Rich's points seems to be that compulsory heterosexual or male homosexual relations is heterosexuality depends as much on the profoundly weakened thereby, whatever its COMPULSORY ABLE-BODIEDNESS AND QUEER /D ISABLED EXISTENCE I 397 other contributions. Feminist theory can no contextualizes disability in the root sense longer afford merely to voice a toleration of of the word, because I argue that the system "lesbianism " as an "alternative life-style," or of compulsory able-bodiedness that pro make token allusion to lesbians. A feminist duces disability is thoroughly interwoven critique of compulsory heterosexual orien with the system of compulsory heterosexu tation for women is long overdue. ality that produces queerness, that-in (178) fact-compulsory heterosexuality is contin gent on compulsory able-bodiedness and The critique that Rich calls for proceeds not vice versa. And, although I reiterate it in through a simple recognition or even my conclusion, I want to make it clear at valuation of "lesbian existence" but rather the outset that this particular contextualiz through an interrogation of how the system ing of disability is offered as part of a much of compulsory heterosexuality utilizes that larger and collective project of unraveling existence. Indeed, I would extract from her and decomposing both systems .4 suspicion of mere "toleration" confirmation The idea of imbricated systems is of for the idea that one of the ways in which course not new-Rich's own analysis heterosexuality is currently constituted or repeatedly stresses the imbrication of founded, established as the foundational compulsory heterosexuality and pat sexual identity for women, is precisely riarchy. I would argue, however, as others through the deployment oflesbian existence have, that feminist and queer theories (and as always and everywhere supplementary cultural theories generally) are not yet the margin to heterosexuality 's center, the accustomed to figuring ability/ disability mere reflection of (straight and gay) pat into the equation, and thus this theory of riarchal realities. Compulsory heterosexu compulsory able-bodiedness is offered as a ality's casting of some identities as preliminary contribution to that much alternatives ironically buttresses the ideo needed conversation. 5 logical notion that dominant identities are not really alternatives but rather the natural 1 ABLE-BODIED order of things. HETEROSEXUALITY More than 20 years after it was initially published, Rich's critique of compulsory In his introduction to Keywords: A Vocabu heterosexuality is indispensable, the criti lary of Culture and Society, Raymond cisms of her ahistorical notion of a "lesbian Williams describes his project as continuum" notwithstanding.2 Despite its continued relevance, however, the realm of the record of an inquiry into a vocabulary. a compulsory heterosexuality might seem to shared body of words and meanings in our be an unlikely place to begin contextualizing most general discussions, in English, of the disability.3 I want to challenge that by con practices and institutions which we group as sidering what might be gained by under culture and society. Every word which I have included has at some time, in the course of standing "compulsory heterosexuality" as some argument, virtually forced itself on my a key concept in disability studies. Through attention because the problems of its mean a reading of compulsory heterosexuality, I ing seemed to me inextricably bound up with want to put forward a theory of what I call the problems it was being used to discuss . compulsory able-bodiedness . The Latin (15) root for contextualize denotes the act of weaving together, interweaving, joining Although Williams is not particularly con together, or composing. This chapter thus cerned in Keywords with feminism or gay 398 I ROBERT MCRUER and lesbian liberation, the processes he Compulsion is here produced and covered describes should be recognizable to femin over, with the appearance of choice (sexual ists and queer theorists, as well as to scholars preference) mystifying a system in which and activists in other contemporary move there actually is no choice. ments, such as African American studies or A critique of normalcy has similarly been critical race theory. As these movements central to the disability rights movement have developed, increasing numbers of and to disability studies, with-for words have indeed forced themselves on example-Lennard Davis's overview and our attention, so that an inquiry into not critique of the historical emergence of just the marginalized identity but also the normalcy or Rosemarie Garland-Thomson's dominant identity has become necessary. introduction of the concept of the The problem of the meaning of masculinity "normate" (Davis 23--49;Garland-Thomson (or even maleness), of whiteness, of hetero 8-9) . Such scholarly and activist work sexuality has increasingly been understood positions us to locate the problems of able as inextricably bound up with the problems bodied identity, to see the problem of the the term is being used to discuss. meaning of able-bodiedness as bound up One need go no further than the Oxford with the problems it is being used to discuss. English Dictionary to locate problems with Arguably, able-bodied identity is at this the meaning of heterosexuality. In 1971 the juncture even more naturalized than het OED Supplement defined heterosexual as erosexual identity. At the very least, many "pertaining to or characterized by the nor people not sympathetic to queer theory will mal relations of the sexes; opp. to homosex concede that ways of being heterosexual ual." At this point, of course, a few decades of are culturally produced and culturally vari critical work by feminists and queer theorists able, even if and even as they understood have made it possible to acknowledge quite heterosexual identity itself to be entirely readily that heterosexual and homosexual natural. The same cannot be said, on the are in fact not equal and opposite identities . whole, for able-bodied identity. An extreme Rather, the ongoing subordination of homo example that nonetheless encapsulates sexuality (and bisexuality) to heterosexuality currently hegemonic thought on ability allows for heterosexuality to be institutiona and disability is a notorious Salon article lized as "the normal relations of the sexes," attacking disability studies that appeared while the institutionalization of heterosexu online in the summer of 1999. Norah Vin ality as the "normal relations of the sexes" cent writes, "It's hard to deny that some allows for homosexuality (and bisexuality) to thing called normalcy exists. The human be subordinated. And, as queer theory con body is a machine, after all-one that has tinues to demonstrate, it is precisely the evolved functional parts: lungs for breath introduction of