October 27, 2014 - 01:49
Ellen Samuels sets out to " queer disability". Critques Swains idea that homosexuality and disability in general have a lot in common because people from either or both communities experience a coming out process in that society assumes that everyone is straight and able bodied until told otherwise. Samuels find that Swain' and Cameron's anaolgy is that "coming out" is implied to be a single event when it may be an action, self acceptance, or political shift. Samuels talks about how people with non visable disabilities and non heterosexual people both share the ability to "pass". There is a privilege that people with non visable disabilities have because of their ability to be able to assimulate. Although this is something that both share and what is looked down on at "selling out", people with disabilities do not have the ability to dress to show their disability other than if they chose to wear a sign while people who are homosexual can dress differently or wear acessories to depict their varying sexuality. Samuels continues with this by saying that, " ... Coming out as disabled appears to have more in common with racial discourses f coming out or passing than with queer discourse, since the contigent (non) visibility of queer identity has produced a variety of non verable and/or spoken means to signal that identity, while the assumed visibility of race and disability has produced an absence of non verbal signs and a distrust of spoken claims of identity (322)". Samuels also touches on the idea that "coming out" with a non visable disability also creates a lot of back blash; she quotes Amanda Hamilton writing, " [people with non visable disabilities] are in a sense forced to pass and the same time assumed to be liars (323)".
Samuels introduces Swain's and Cameron's analogy nonvisible disabilities and femme lesbians. Samuels than critiques this by stating, yes both femme lesbians and people with non disabilites do not fit into distinct and visible categories but femme lesbians are marginalized largly in the lesbian subculture while people with non visable disabilities are marginalized within dominant culture.Thus, People with non visible face more discrimination and larger economic repercussions such as accommodations while being largly accepted by the disabilites community. Samuels uncovers the problematic nature of this analogy and therefore proves that analogies comparing various communties effected by social injustice are always problamatic in nature.
Samuels ends by stating that "By queering disability in these ways, we offer the larger fields of queer and disability studies new posibilities beyond simple analogizing as we explore "unfamiliar territory" together (329)".