#MeToo? The Desire/Ability Paradox
When I came out, someone close to me asked me if the reason I was gay was because I felt insecure about not getting enough attention from men due to being disabled.
Wow. That’s a lot to unpack.
First, it’s not true that I didn’t get attention from men. This same person once described my approach to my closeted love life as “going through boys like paper towels,” (which is, as it turns out, a baby lesbian thing). What is true is that people, boys and men in particular, were brazen in their misunderstanding of my body and my sexuality.
I spent my teenage years desperately trying to be “pretty,” because a desire to be pretty was equated with having self respect in my home. The fact that I wasn’t sexually harassed by boys at my school locker or catcalled by men on the street didn’t bother me until I realized that it was probably because they couldn’t make heads or tails of me as a sexual being due to my disability. I felt like less of a woman because I hadn’t been sexually objectified.
Isn’t it sad that womanhood is so deeply connected to a history of violence that to escape that violence (by way of misogyny and ability discrimination) is to feel less of a woman?
I once tried to explain this pain to an ex-boyfriend, and he asked me if I’d prefer it if I had had these experiences of being harassed, raped, or brutalized. Of course, I told him, no I wouldn’t. But it was a strange pain to carry around, to not be able to relate to the seemingly ubiquitous experiences of the women around me. The irony there is that another social side effect of physical disability is that you are often infantilized and disrespected in your very personhood, which I would come to find is a common experience of misogyny as well.
So, I suppose it wasn’t too much of a leap for this person who knew me intimately to wonder if I had turned to women to escape not the pain of men’s mistreatment, but the reality that I just wasn’t as desirable to them. But this suggestion made me incredibly angry and upset, because I was trying to articulate the fact that my orientation was entirely unrelated to men and whether or not they found me attractive.
I knew that sexual assault wasn’t motivated by attraction to victims, but by a need for power and control over them. I knew that disabled women experience a higher rate of sexual violence than non-disabled women and that bisexual women experience higher rates of sexual violence than straight or gay women (I first came out as bisexual; this upsetting conversation happened as I was coming out as a lesbian). I knew that however confusing my lack of adverse experiences was, I was lucky.
Since coming out, I have become much more masculine in my appearance. This, coupled with my visible disability, makes me two kinds of “incorrectly female”. There is no way anyone can package me as a sexual object. But I’m not like this because I don’t want to be viewed as sexy; I’m like this precisely because of my desire to appeal to women as a sexual being. Women who look past my mobility aids and see my appeal, my swagger. My gender nonconformity isn’t a sign of giving up or switching teams, desperately seeking love and validation. It’s taking off a costume that never fit, and insisting that my womanhood/personhood is legitimate. My sexuality is legitimate. I am legitimate and loveable and desirable, even if my life seems riddled with paradoxes.
Do you have experiences with paradoxes of desire/ability and gender identity? Share them with me in the comments or on Twitter.
