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My Body, My Closet

Hummingbird's picture

"My Body, My Closet" is about the ways invisible disabilities require a kind of "coming out" similar in some ways to the experiences of those in the LGBT community. Samuels analyzes the different ways coming out can be enacted: as joining (openly) the disability community, as making oneself vulnerable, etc. And she analyzes the way chosing not to come out (or "passing") is read: as "selling out" and assuming normative privileges compared with protecting oneself and avoiding discrimination.

Queer Nondisabled

Sunshine's picture

I love how I read this article from the perspective of Disability Studies, which is a perspective I did not have two months ago. But I think I would be interesting to think about this article from the perspective of somebody in Queer Studies who has no background in Disability Studies. In class we talk about the difference between Impairment and disability, and how an impairment does not have to be 'bad.' But without that backgroud, the connection between disability and sexuality may be taken badly.  What qualifies as an impairment? Is a non-heterosexual identity an impairment?

#7 Planting Potatoes x Raising a Kid (Rough Draft)

nienna's picture

Lloyd as a potato farmer tended to transfer his passion for and knowledge of planting potatoes to his only child Yumi. However, Lloyd did not realized that planting potatoes is not the perfect metaphor, but planting in a new empty soil.

 

-> Yumi knowing she is different from what her father think she is. Feeling like the exotic plant.

->  Lloyd not being used to his potatoes running away from him.

 

Some book quotes that might be able to support the point of view

Bad seed (rough draft)

Hgraves's picture

{At this point I’m writing about how Yumi was branded the bad seed but when I looked up the etymology, a bad seed is a genetic thing. Like it doesn’t just turn bad as they said Yumi did, it is already bad. Therefore, I believe it was her environment that shaped her identity. So, basically I state in my thesis that Yumi wasnt a bad seed, but in fact she was a good seed just overtaken by weeds and not planted in the soil she needed to flourish accordingly. -- Unfortunately the server was down when I woke up this morning to add the part below, and the library was closed so I couldn’t use the computer I used the other day to get the rest of my paper, so I had to just write this by itself and the rest of my paper is in my email.}

Social Chameleons

Leigh Alexander's picture

People at birth are given a name.   It is this name that follows us through our lives, and gains meaning to those around us as we develop who we ourselves are.  Yet, as we struggle through the process of growth and reform, the gaining of knowledge and the loss of innocence, our names become more pliable to the world around us.  Just as we become more able to define ourselves, as we open our view of the environment we are a member of, we become more aware of the roles we should be playing, and the environment has the ability to pressure our identities to shift accordingly.