TW /// mentions of N@zism, eugenics, child murder

A point that stood out to me when reading “The Social Model of Disability,” specifically this line about how society classifies people with disabilities and people who do not. “Disabled people are an oppressed group, and often non- disabled people and organizations…are the causes or contributors to that oppression.” This quote specifically reminds me of a conversation I recently had with a close friend about two programs that are present in many schools — public and private — in the United States: Special education and the “Gifted & Talented” program. In this conversation we had come to the realization that majority of students placed in gifted & talented programs were just as neurodivergent as the students placed in special education, the only difference between them was if the school staff perceived these students as “useful” vs “a burden.” I say this as someone who went through my schools version of the “gifted & talented” program from K-12, I have yet to meet someone who had gone through one of these programs in school that did not also get diagnosed with ASD and/or ADHD in their adulthood. These student’s did have disabilities, ones that significantly impacted how they interacted with the world around them, and yet not only were they classified as “non-disabled,” they were actively made to feel superior to their peers who were classified as “disabled” yet shared the same if not similar conditions.

So why does this happen? Why is does this disconnect between the medical model and the social model of disability happen, and why does it often pit people with disabilities against each other? In a way I like to think that society uses people with disabilities that are disabled in ways that are seen as more “beneficial” are used as a weapon against those who are disabled in ways that do not serve society. Even just the language around how we classify people with disabilities changes depending on if they are seen as beneficial or burdensome. A person classified as “gifted & talented” is meant to feel that they are superior to the rest of the population, especially in comparison to a person classified as “special needs,” perpetuating this idea that a disability is something that can be “overcome” and that those who are unable to are at fault for being unable to navigate a world that was not built for them in the first place.

This is not a new phenomenon, historically society has divided those with disabilities based on how “useful” or how “burdensome” they were seen as. The biggest example of this I can think of is the condition “Asperger’s Syndrome.” The creator of the term, Hans Asperger, was instrumental to the eugenics practices of the Nazi regime which actively classified autistic children based on who had “good vs bad genetic traits” that the Nazi regime would want to pass on. Children who presented as having “good genetics” were labeled as having “Asperger’s Syndrome” because they would be more likely to be well educated and take on high positions in society, thus making them “more valuable.” On the flipside, children who presented “bad genetics” were labeled “autistic psychopaths” and “undesirable” to the Nazi regime, which led to them being institutionalized at first, but from 1939-1945 these children would be systematically murdered under the state-sponsored child euthanasia program, Aktion T4, a program that Hans Asperger himself was complicit in. As we know today, “Asperger’s Syndrome” is really just a certain manifestation of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and is no longer considered its own sperate condition after being removed from the DSM-5 in 2013. That being said, how it has been used historically tells us a lot about how we classify people as disabled vs non-disabled, how being disabled in the medical sense doesn’t mean you are unable to contribute to the oppression and subjugation of other people with disabilities. In a way, society is the lumberjack, but they use the disabled people who are “useful” as the axe to further chop down a tree they don’t want.

Yet the whole time, we’re both wooden sticks, one was just given a blade.

I found “Throwing Like a Girl” by Iris Marion Young to be the reading I related to the most so far. Young talks about how society can shape the way we see what our bodies can do and how boys and girls can learn to use their bodies differently. One of her examples is throwing a ball. She explains that boys are usually encouraged to use their arms, legs, and the space around them, while girls might be more likely to hold back and not use their whole body. This made me think about how different my childhood was. My dad raised me doing what people would probably call “man things.” We went hunting and fishing, worked on cars, welded, and worked on farms together. He basically raised me like I was his prettiest son. Honestly, I was completely fine with it because I loved doing all those things. Even my brother wasn’t as interested in doing them as I was.

When I think about it now, my dad never really taught me that there were things I couldn’t do just because I was a girl. If something needed to be fixed, built, lifted, or figured out, I was usually right there wanting to help. He taught me to be comfortable using my body and not just assume something was “for boys.” That is one of the reasons Young’s example about throwing stood out to me. My experience was almost the opposite of what she describes. My dad taught me to throw with confidence and actually use my whole body. He even raised me to know how to throw every ball as well as, if not better than, a man. Looking back, I think that had a bigger impact on me than I realized when I was younger.

I also see this same idea with the phrase “running like a girl,” which I see all over TikTok. A lot of the videos and jokes around it make “running like a girl” seem like this very girly, unathletic, almost pretty-looking way of running. It is usually portrayed as someone not really using their whole body or looking very serious about being athletic. That reminds me a lot of Young’s point about throwing like a girl. In both examples, there is this idea that there is a certain way girls are expected to move. My experience was pretty different from that because I grew up playing sports and was used to keeping up with the men around me. I never really thought about changing the way I ran or threw because I was a girl. To me, I was just trying to play the sport and do what I needed to do. I think both throwing and running show how much using your body confidently can become something you learn from the people around you.

This connects to phenomenology because it is basically about people’s lived experiences and how we experience the world through our bodies. Growing up, my body wasn’t just something physical. It was something I used to do the things I enjoyed with my dad. I learned how to weld, work on cars, fish, hunt, and work on a farm, and all of those experiences became a part of who I was. Someone else could have grown up with completely different expectations about what they were supposed to do with their body. That’s what I find interesting about the idea of lived experience. We all have bodies, but we don’t all experience them in the same way.

I also started thinking about this idea differently after reading Linda Alcoff’s “Towards a Phenomenology of Racial Embodiment.” Alcoff talks about how race can affect the way someone experiences their body and how other people see them. Even though she is talking about race and Young is talking about gender, I noticed a similar idea in both readings. The way we are seen and treated by other people can affect our experiences. In my case, being a girl who was interested in activities that were usually seen as “men’s activities” affected how I interacted with people. When I was younger, though, I didn’t really think I was different. I was just doing things I liked doing.

Claudia Rankine’s Citizen also connects to this idea because she shows how everyday experiences can shape how someone sees themselves. Rankine focuses on experiences with race and how something that seems small to one person can mean a lot more to the person going through it. I saw a connection to Young because throwing a ball seems like such a small and normal thing too. There isn’t anything complicated about throwing a ball, but Young uses it to show how gender expectations can affect something as basic as the way someone moves. Both readings made me think about how everyday things can shape how we see ourselves without us even realizing it.

The readings from Tom Shakespeare and Mike Oliver about the social model of disability made me think about what our bodies are actually capable of compared to what society expects from us. They explain that disability isn’t only about a person’s impairment, but also about the barriers that society creates. I can connect this to Young because she also talks about how social expectations can affect what people feel comfortable doing with their bodies. In both situations, there can be a difference between what someone is actually capable of and the limitations that other people or society put on them. It made me think about how often we assume what someone can or can’t do based on their body.

My childhood also had an effect on how I connected with other people. Since I spent so much time doing things that were usually considered “man things,” I sometimes had a harder time connecting with other girls. I didn’t always have the same interests as them, and sometimes I felt like I had more in common with boys because of the things I liked doing. At the same time, the female friends I did make usually had a lot of the same interests as me. I think that actually made those friendships stronger because we already had things we genuinely liked doing together. Looking back, I think the things I grew up doing had a pretty big effect on the people I connected with.

Overall, these readings have made me think about the body in a completely different way. I used to mostly think of the body as just the physical part of a person, but now I see how our experiences, how people treat us, and how we are raised can all affect our relationship with our bodies. “Throwing Like a Girl” connected with me the most because I could actually compare Young’s ideas to my own childhood. My dad raised me differently than what Young describes for many girls, and honestly, I’m glad he did because I loved doing all of those things with him. Growing up that way taught me not to automatically put limits on myself just because I was a girl. At the same time, it showed me that the way we grow up can affect more than just what we do physically. It can affect our friendships, our confidence, and the way we see ourselves. I never really thought about my childhood this way before reading these articles, but now I look back on it a little differently.

Gender itself is a social construct but it goes much deeper than that. It’s something that is rooted with every day activity, how we perceive our family, friends and especially ourselves. It’s a concept that was made a long time ago that has slowly evolved into something more but the fundamentals of it stay the same.

In Iris Marion Young’s “Throwing like a Girl,” it discussed how there is a “remarkable difference in the manner of throwing of the two sexes.” This is just scraping the surface of how these types of mannerisms and phrases are so ingrained in our minds. When you think of “throwing like a girl” the thing that most people think of is a girl throwing with just her arm and with little to no strength because we are taught to leave sports to boys. It is taught that it is a more masculine trait to be athletic or be strong and that is what makes a man. As the opposite, being weak is associated with being more feminine and that is what makes a woman. These beliefs are everywhere in life, from something simple as throwing a ball to something much more important such as our opportunities in this society when getting jobs and respect from your fellow workers.

Why is this? That is a question I always asked myself every year and every time there is a reason to question it. Why must I be weak to be seen as a girl? Why do I have to wear these clothes labeled feminine to be seen as a girl? Why do I have to be seen as a girl at all? I usually spiral into questions and end up with all different answers. It’s society, it’s my family, it’s our beliefs or it’s just me. These are a lot of questions for just one person but not so much for one society, but to remedy centuries of submitting to one belief, we first have to start with ourselves before it could become a movement.

In classical mechanics, the two-body problem assumes the two bodies under review are perfect spheres that never collide and that no outside forces affect their interaction. It underpins virtually every law and theory in physics. An unshakable pillar of scientific concept.

And yet, phenomenologically, it couldn’t be further from the truth.

Race is arguably the most malleable, in-flux idea ever created. However, it is so deeply ingrained into every part of society that it is basically inextricable from human existence and our modern world. Every group has stereotypes forced onto them. Racism, misogyny, homophobia, ableism- all of it and more infect every institution. Discrimination can even stack on top of each other (intersectionality). Contradictions abound, and my recent summer femme transcendence has made those discrepancies hit like a Mack truck.

Being a Black man in America is one of the most confining experiences of all time. The expectation is for us to be violent, “ghetto”, hypersexual, foolish, and criminal. Hilarious, yet stupid. Lusted after, yet predatory. Athletically superior, but only because of genetics. “Fulfilling” these stereotypes is held up as an example of truth. It’s expected. This is what black men are “supposed” to be.

Subverting them, though, is the more inflammatory choice.

After moving out of my mother’s home, I spent the entire summer completely overhauling my wardrobe. Due to her homophobia, I dressed masculine for the entirety of my freshman year, and I despised every second of it. Needless to say, experiencing gender euphoria is a beautiful thing. The number of compliments I received dressing femme was so overwhelming that I struggled for months to figure out the best way to respond, because I had gone my whole life without that kind of attention. The way people treated me was starkly different too. Expressing my gender the way I was “expected” to, that being a masculine black man, made me nearly invisible. Nobody batted an eye because it was just the way things should’ve been. However, when I began dressing feminine, everything changed.

People would take every chance to compliment me and get to know me. Complete strangers would tell me that they loved my outfit as I walked by. Men, who never gave me any romantic time of day before, were suddenly interested in getting to know me better (I will never forget the first time a man called me “mama”). Still, nothing changed more than how I was treated in a more gendered way. Presenting feminine made people, especially men, more polite and gentle towards me. Doors were held open, feminine descriptors were used (beautiful, pretty, etc.), and most affirmingly, my gender/pronouns started to be explicitly asked for/verified. I loved it, but it also made me feel… weird. Why was I previously deemed someone to treat coldly? Why did I have to present so differently to receive consideration? And why the hell is it that now the white people are disarmed at the sight of me, while the dirtiest looks are coming from my own people?

As you can guess, the answers to those questions were very layered. The class readings of Young & Alcoff were, in fact, very helpful in that regard. Young’s dissection of the male and female socialization and societal expectations was especially illuminating. Spending the vast majority of my life as a masculine-presenting black man, I was raised to fulfill the expectations society expected of my gender and race. I was told to take up space, hold in my feelings (many a “be a man” and “stop crying”), play sports, adopt “manly” interests/hobbies, and never, ever, do anything “girly”. Dolls were out of the question, even though I secretly loved playing with my sisters’ Barbie Dreamhouse. Touching cosmetics earned a beatdown. Affection was looked down upon, with my go-to way of hugging being replaced by a dap. Even as a child, I knew I wasn’t living up to these expectations, nor did I want to. They were forced upon me by my friends, family, and, most extremely, my peers. However, this way of socialization, in some ways unique to my culture, greatly affects the way I subconsciously occupy space. Simultaneously, it’s also something that I’m actively unlearning.

This journey of unlearning has made me realize just how fluid the concept of gender really is, at least in a personal way. I’ve been in queer spaces since middle school, so it wasn’t a matter of ignorance. Rather, I didn’t realize how fluid my gender identity really is (#genderqueer questioning). As I’ve been unweaving my forced masculinity, I’ve been returning to the femininity that I displayed in my early childhood before it was ripped away. I have vivid memories of having a more feminine voice, walking with a natural strut, wearing my mother and sisters’ cosmetics in secret, hugging everyone I liked, and wanting to wear their pretty outfits and jewelry. Now, I do just that. My hip-walk is back, I wear lip gloss and mascara very often, I have 4 piercings with more to come, and I exclusively wear feminine clothes. Anyone who hears my voice immediately clocks me as gay, like that one Lesley Stahl clip. I’ve also been working to make my body fit a more “ideal” femme gay build, as stupid and problematic as that sounds (which is why it’s in quotations).

But what, really, makes all of these behaviors so gendered? As a child, the way I interacted with the world was just a part of who I was. The way I walked and talked came naturally; it was my most comfortable state. My interests were just what I liked. I loved Barbie dolls just as much as I loved my Batman action figures. Physical touch was and still is my favorite way to show and receive. It wasn’t until I was told that these things weren’t what boys “should” like that I started feeling the pressure to change. And it wasn’t just the men; it was the women too.

Patriarchy is such an evil, evil thing. It’s also incredibly layered, especially when it intersects with race. Patriarchy is one of the core tools of white supremacy, but every minority adopts the belief too. The expectations of black masculinity are even more extreme than white masculinity due to the black man’s lack of access to the benefits of white supremacist patriarchy. It calls back to what we talked about in class with afropessimism, though I’d more so call this afrorealism: we can never be good enough. The expectation of black men is for them to be hypermasculine and tough, yet those perceived qualities do not give them access to the higher floor that white men have, and it never will. Therefore, patriarchy and masculinity in the black community are enforced, often violently, through religion, the family, and your peers. It’s so deeply ingrained that in most national polls, Black respondents still trail 10-15% behind their white counterparts when it comes to acceptance of homosexuality. Unfortunately, most queer black people don’t need a poll to know that.

So, when I look at my life, what do I see? I see a paradox. I move through life perceived as a black man, weighed down by all the assumptions about my masculinity, sexuality, intelligence, and much more. At the same time, I subvert many of those assumptions almost exclusively because of my gender expression.

I have two bodies. And that’s a problem.

“The meanest dog you’ll ever meet
He ain’t the hound dog in the street
He bares some teeth and tears some skin
But, brother, that’s the worst of him
The dog you really got to dread
Is the one that howls inside your head
It’s him whose howling drives men mad
And a mind to its undoing” – Anaïs Mitchell

A cold room, a lone soul, a lost cause

And yet the silence screeches in their ears

The pounding of their tired heart echos the dreadful reminder

They are alive

They are not sure they want to be

As doubt seeps

What makes their lives worthy of a statement?

Of a movement?

Nobody is listening because nobody cares

Death is not the thing it used to be

People have died before

Some names are sung, faces memorialized across buildings and cities, their stories shared, their families consoled

Millions left us too soon, untraced and unknown

Ungrieved.

You could be next, or you could be the last

Which is worse?

A dog howls in a cold room

He’s a lone soul, a lost cause

His bark is worse than his bite

But the bark is enough to be a mans undoing

Cover art for the concept album, Hadestown, written by Anaïs Mitchell.

So I am taking a sociology of death and dying class currently, and a lot has stuck out to me. There is this thing called “advanced care planning” which involves things like DNR’s, advanced directives and setting a legal healthcare proxy. Through this class I not only thought about this for myself; I considered sociocultural aspects of planning for worst case scenarios. As a disabled person, I end up in some scary healthcare situation, and often have to think about what happens if I end up unconscious and unable to make my own decisions. Then throw being queer and living a ways away from family on top of that, and it really makes one think. So I have discussed my wishes extensively with family as well as my partner, but that does not mean all is fine and dandy. The family aspect isn’t really an issue when it comes to this as there are inherent legal protections involved with family making medical decisions for a loved ones. For straight couples, an opposite sex partner is often regarded as someone trusted to make some decisions, and in marriage those protections are even more solid. When it comes to queer couples, we face inherent stigma, and less marriage protections. In my particular situation, my family could get to me in an emergency in roughly an hour in perfect conditions. That is an hour unable to have my wishes known if I am unconcious. On the other hand, my partner is much more local. If it was a boyfriend being the emergency contact and someone to speak for me, it wouldn’t be as big of a deal. But I am with a woman, a trans woman at that. This scares me as our relationship will likely be taken less seriously. This is a very common fear for queer couples, as demonstrated in research. A study done by Thomeer et. al studies the occurance of legally binding advance care planning in queer vs straight couples. I will try and link it for the readers out there. Anyways, the researchers found that queer folks are significantly more likely to have legal documents in place, likely due to fears I have highlighted above, supporting my argument that queer folks face healthcare inequality and that is one of many ways sociopolitical factors hurt queer people.