"Integrating Disability, Transforming Feminist Theory"-by Rosemarie Garland-Thomas

In reading the article by RoseMarie Garland-Thomson, it allowed me to understand another of the privileges that I have as an able-bodied person. My mother's skill as a sign language interpreter allowed me to enter the "silent world," also known as the deaf world. Notice I say deaf, as opposed to the phrase "hearing impaired." Men and women who fall into this community
despise the phrase "hearing impaired," because they have pride-Deaf Pride. They do not view their inability to hear as a dysfunction, but rather as the gift of speaking with one's hands, and being able to see another world. All too often in the feminist movement, we seem to have this one-sided view of what a woman is supposed to look like. In "Integrating Disability. . .," Garland-Thomson states that "integrating disability does not obscure our critical focus on the registers of race, sexuality, ethnicity, or gender, not is it additive." I would like to add that it would be very hypocritical of the feminist movement not to incoporate the ideologies of persons with certain inabilities that are not of the general population, in addition to the many discriminations that they face because of cultural definitions of normativity. The overall definition of "disability" is also challenged in the article. Garland-Thomas further states that "disability is a culturally fabricated narrative of the body, similar to what we understand as the fictions of race and gender." To hear this particular statement is absolutely amazing for it allows us, as women, to understand how even the term "disability" is one that incorporates blatant patriarchal notions. One must also understand that at certain points in history, specifically during ancient Greece, women's bodies were viewed as being that of deformed men. To my recollection, I believe it was the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates who said "why educate a woman, she is only a castrated male." So the ideology of disability is heavily linked with gender, from a historical point of view. In the section on "The Body," Garland-Thomson goes on to address the fact that certain technological innovations (i.e. the corset, the body brace, and etc.) were created as a result to create the ideal "docile body"-specifically for women. With such analysis taking place, it is very disturbing that "able-bodied" women in the women's movement have perpetuated these same oppressive notions onto our sisters, whose bodies do not fit society's view of the "normal body." In referring to my previous statement, I greatly admire members of the deaf community on their ownership of the term as a gift. To embrace the ideology of being deaf as a beautiful thing is a form of activism against a system that would view their inability to hear as a negative.