Vedanti Singhal: week 2

Compulsory Able-Bodiedness and Queer/Disabled Existence

This article highlights the argument where heterosexuality is analogous to a political institution which disempowers women. It is contended that there is underlying presumption of female heterosexuality and that it is always a woman’s sexual preference, which is enforced by patriarchal society. This contention is debunked by emphasizing that heterosexuality is not mandatorily innate or natural for females. Compulsory heterosexuality and compulsory able-bodiedness work together, noting how queer/’disabled’ figured are deployed in order to support the two systems. Compulsory able-bodiedness is instituted and maintained through less physical means, through verbal and non-verbal messages. The most basic manifestation is the cultural presumption of able-bodiedness. In this article, McReur compares the two systems. He claims that the two are thoroughly interwoven. The two are interlinked in their mutual impossibility and incomprehensibility, each is an identity that is simultaneously the ground on which all identities supposedly rest and an impressive achievement that is always deferred and thus never really guaranteed. A related point he makes is that compulsory heterosexuality creates queerness and compulsory able-bodiedness creates disability. These alternatives are reminders that there is an existing superior ‘norm’. the nexus between being queer and being disabled is that being queer disables one. Virtual queer identity is experienced by anyone who failed to perform heterosexuality without contradiction and incoherence.