"Space: The final frontier": The invisibility of disability on the landscape of women studies

Karen DePauw is the author of "Adapted Physical Activity and Sport: Health Concerns and Research Implications for Females with Disabilities," in The Health of Women with Physical Disabilities: Setting a Research Agenda for the 90's, ed. D. M. Krotoski, M. Nosek, and M. Turk (Baltimore: Brookes Publishing, I996) and "A Feminist Perspective on Sport and Sport Organizations for Persons with Disabilities," in VISTA 93 The Outlook, ed. R. Steadward, E. Nelson, and G. Wheeler (Edmonton, Alberta: Rick Hansen Centre); she is coauthor, with Susan J. Gavron, of Disability and Sport (Champaign, Ill.: Human Kinetics, 1995). Gene Roddenberry's "Star Trek" television series declared space as the "final frontier" and set the mission of the Starship Enterprise "to boldly go" where no one has gone before. Captain Kirk and his crew not only explored space, but through their travels to different places they were also introduced to different cultures, different societies, and different identities-new and exciting frontiers that challenged the limits of their understandings. Although I don't believe that disability is the "final" frontier for women studies, I find the metaphor of space intriguing in thinking about the confluence of gender and disability-for women studies as well as for disability studies. Space, as the physical space we occupy, affects us all, and examining individual and social/public use of space can, perhaps, challenge our able-bodied notions of the world and space around us. To study or analyze disability as a social construct challenges preconceived notions of reality including our bodies, our space, our identities, and our cultures. Although female bodies have been central to feminism, and feminist theory has been responsible for raising consciousness about the exploitation and control of women's bodies, exploring the intersection of gender and disability can work to disrupt and further complicate issues of exploitation and control of female bodies/identities.1

The interdisciplinary field of women studies has challenged our understanding of women, gender, and society. Currently, many women studies scholars examine issues of race, class, gender, and their intersections. The scholarly inquiry of many feminist scholars addresses issues such as work, health, education, and sexuality, for example, yet disability issues are not usually included among the current topics for women studies.

As a case in point, I recently received an electronic announcement about a "Women and Power" conference. Twenty-four topics were identified as potential sessions. Among these were women, race, and class; women in cyberspace, women in history, women in literature; women and music, women and health, women and politics, women and spirituality, women and sport, French feminism, and ecofeminism. In addition, a twenty-fifth category was offered and was divided into three subsections: women and art, women and sexuality, and "papers not fitting other categories." Although it could be argued that a paper on women with disabilities could be included within some other topic, the invisibility of disability becomes apparent. In much the same way that the women's movement has been criticized, historically, as a white woman's movement, the field of women studies has tended to reflect an able-bodied perspective, especially as perceived by women with disabilities. For example, Deborah Lisi, a disabled female activist, explains: We live in a culture hung up on physical attributes and physical acceptance. Because so much of the women's movement in this country is based on pretty stereotypical assumptions, some of the issues other women fight about, and for, represent cultural norms (however limiting or faulty) that we are not viewed through or included in.... It is hard for girls and young women to see disability pride as something worth having; too many attitudes and stereotypes pervade the way we are treated, the way we perceive our own bodies when we accept our body through the eyes and assumptions of the able-bodied.2 Except when addressing aging and older women, where impairment or disability "naturally" surfaces, disability as a social issue among females remains understudied. Likewise, the burgeoning field of disability studies has only begun to focus on the particulars of gender, or other socially constructed identities, within studies of disability issues. The field of disability studies also needs to move beyond its initial focus and embrace a broader cultural perspective. The historical roots of disability are found in the medical model, and as a result disability has been viewed as an individual problem or a limiting condition of the person (that is, one's "body").3 According to definitions put forth by the World Health Organization, disability exists when one's impairment or limiting condition adversely affects one's performance. Although there are a multitude of disabling conditions, individuals with disabilities are often categorized by physical impairments (for example, spinal cord injury, cerebral palsy, amputation), mental or learning impairments (for example, mental retardation, learning disabilities), sensory impairments (for example, visual impairment or blindness, deafness), and emotional or behavioral disorders (for example, schizophrenia, autism, severe behavior disorders).

The disability rights movement has challenged us to reconsider disability not as an "individual" problem but rather in the context of social relationships.4 Understanding disability as socially constructed provides a foundation for critical feminist analysis and meaningful discourse about females with disabilities. To date, the primary participants in the dialogue about gender and disability are females with disabilities. These women have explored issues facing (mostly white) females with disabilities and have begun to examine the complexity of difference as a result of the confluence of being female and having a disability.5 Jenny Morris, for example, suggests that "disabled men and women do not conform to the stereotypes of physical attractiveness."6 Heterosexuality, work, and motherhood, terms found to be associated with "woman," were almost entirely missing from the terms associated with "disabled woman"; in contrast, the overwhelming association for women with a disability "is one of passivity, dependency and deprivation."7

Given what Lisi calls the "transformative power of speaking to the larger culture about how disability experiences inform human perceptions and social practices," I believe that feminists scholars can share in the discourse of the intersections of gender and disability through an analysis of the body and space in culture.8 Doreen Massey, a feminist scholar in the field of human geography, focuses on the "intricacy and profundity of the connections of space and place with gender and the construction of gender relations."9 She argues: Particular ways of thinking about space and place are tied up with, both directly and indirectly, particular social constructions of gender relations.... The implication is that challenging certain of the ways in which space and place are currently conceptualized implies also, indeed necessitates, challenging the currently dominant form of gender definitions and gender relations.Io Massey defines "space" "not as some absolute independent dimension, but as constructed out of social relations: that what is at issue is not social phenomena in space but both social phenomena and space as constituted out of social relations."II Although Massey writes about the social nature of space and place and its relation to issues of gender, space as "able bodied" in its social construction was not a part of her analysis. Her statements have additional meaning when reread in the context of disability. Space is related not only to the body and the social construction of body, but in the differences in the "bodies" of females with disabilities and how the body is used and perceived or seen. With few exceptions, individuals with disabilities (with their bodies) use space differently than the culturally defined uses of space found among able-bodied individuals. It seems apparent that those with physical impairments might view "space" differently; the use of wheelchairs, prostheses, canes, and crutches, for example, defines not only the accessibility but also the usability and ease with which individuals with disabilities navigate space. Although less apparent, I would argue that space is conceptualized and therefore utilized differently by individuals with visual impairments (who may perceive structures as obstacles or space as endless or limitless), by those with intellectual or emotional impairments (who may perceive space as confining, space as comforting, or space as providing necessary boundaries or limits), and by the deaf (who may perceive space as deafening or space as expansive).

Thus, the intersection of gender and disability represents a frontier for both women studies and disability studies, and an exploration of how different "bodies" use, occupy, or define space differently will provide useful analyses that will further our critical understanding of the social construction of gendered identities. I would argue, then, that we need "to boldly go" forward into this still unexplored "frontier."

Notes

Margaret Ann Hall, Feminism and Sporting Bodies (Champaign, Ill.: Human Kinetics, I996).

Deborah Lisi, "Found Voices: Women, Disability and Cultural Transformation," in Women with Disabilities: Found Voices, ed. M. E. Willmuth and L. Holcomb (Binghampton, N.Y.: Harrington Park Press, 1993), 20I-2, 2o5-6. For disability in the medical model, see A. L. Chappell, "Towards a Sociological Critique of the Normalization Principle," Disability, Handicap eS Society 7:I (I992): 35-50; for disability viewed as an individual problem, see C. Barnes, Cabbage Syndrome: The Social Construction of Dependence (Basingstoke: Falmer Press, I990).

4. See, Chappell, "Toward a Sociological Critique"; Erving Goffman, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity (Englewood Cliffs, NJ.: Prentice-Hall, 968); M. Hanks and D. E. Poplin, "The Sociology of Physical Disability: A Review of Literature and Some Conceptual Perspectives," Deviant Behavior: An Interdisciplinary Journal z (1981): 309-z8; and Joseph Shapiro, No Pity: People with Disabilities Forging a New Civil Rights Movement (New York: Times Books, I993). 5. See, for example, Susan E. Browne, Debra Connors, and Nanci Stern, With the Power of Each Breath: A Disabled Women's Anthology (San Francisco: Cleis Press, 1985); Michelle Fine and Adrienne Asch, "Disabled Women: Sexism Without the Pedestal," Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare 8 (I98I): z33-48; Jenny Morris, ed., Able Lives: Women's Experience of Paralysis (London: Women's Press, 1989); Jenny Morris, "Personal and Political: A Feminist Perspective on Researching Physical Disability," Disability, Handicap er Society 7 (I99I): I57-66, and Pride Against Prejudice: Transforming Attitudes to Disability (Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1992; and M. W Willmuth and L. Holcomb, eds., Women with Disabilities: Found Voices (Binghampton, N.Y.: Harrington Park Press, 1993). 6. Morris, Pride Against Prejudice, gz. 7. Morris, Pride Against Prejudice, 97. 8. Lisi, "Found Voices," Ig5.

9. Doreen Massey, Space, Place, and Gender (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota,

1994), 2.

10 Massey, Space, Place, and Gender, z. it. Massey, Space, Place, and Gender, z.

Copyright Frontiers Publishing, Inc. 1996
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved