3 posts on butch/femme & disability – read ‘em.

First, bfp at Flip Flopping Joy: “what is butch?”

but then i see sites specifically for butches–and all i see are women who clearly are spending hours and hours and tons of money getting dressed up–with plucked eyebrows even! –and i wonder, what makes those women any different than femme girls? aren’t they ‘performing’ the exact same gender roles that they are supposedly rejecting by claiming “butch?” [...]

Then cripchick, “ON GENDER AND DISABILITY“.

in the comment section of that post, BFP tells another person she reads me as a total femme. i don’t know if other people would be as delighted as i was but my natural reaction was the immense need to take that as a compliment— with disability being understood as such an asexual thing, no one ever affirms me even having gender. the traditional disability narrative puts me in this place of being something else: that if gender was a binary, i’d be in a third gender realm. [...]

Then Wheelchair Dancer, “Butch/Femme — Crip”

Disability and feminism should go hand in hand. Disability should be an explicit part of gender and queer studies. But even in the hallowed halls of academia and, yes, out here in the wild web blogosphere, disability is only a small part of the conversation, a small part of posts on feminism, gender, and sexuality. It is something the cripchicks and gimpgirls (relishes the words, rolls them around her tongue) repeatedly have to bring to the conversation. And, yes, we do tire of being the voices of “but wait, disability ….” But unless we speak of our experience, the conversation will fail us and, ultimately, you. [...]

ETA 30 May 2009: Diary of a Goldfish, “Gender Presentation & Disability”

This game is not for the likes of me. Gender presentation isn’t all about clothes or shopping, of course, but I am most conscious of my outsider status in clothes shops and at beauty counters. They display things close together and on high hooks and rails. All the mannequins are standing up. They have bright lights and loud music. And the assistants can be so condescending, as if I am a child playing at dressing up. They huff and puff if you ask them for help, they roll their eyes with impatience, they sneer at your choices and it feels the height of rudeness to leave without parting with money. [...]

Read ‘em, and read the comment threads.

Any thoughts about disability and the butch/femme spectrum from the Hoydenizens?

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Tagged as: bfp, binary, butch, cripchick, disability, fashion, femme, gender, narrative, queer, sexuality, wheelchair, wheelchair dancer