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Needing to Acquire a Physical Impairment/Disability: (Re)Thinking the Connections between Trans and Disability Studies through Transability

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 September 2014

Alexandre Baril
Translated by
Catriona Leblanc
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Abstract

This article discusses the acquisition of a physical impairment/disability through voluntary body modification, or transability. From the perspectives of critical genealogy and feminist intersectional analysis, the article considers the ability and cis*/trans* axes in order to question the boundaries between trans and transabled experience and examines two assumptions impeding the conceptualization of their placement on the same continuum: 1) trans studies assumes an able‐bodied trans identity and able‐bodied trans subject of analysis; and 2) disability studies assumes a cis* disabled identity. The perception of transsexuality and transability as mutually exclusive phenomena results from a nonintersectional analysis of transsexuality as an issue of sex/gender, but not of ability, and of transability as an issue of ability, but not of sex/gender. Difficulty recognizing continuities between these phenomena thus stems from an ableist interpretation of sex/gender and a cis(gender)normative* interpretation of ability. This article aims to: 1) enrich intersectional analysis in trans and disability studies and transability scholarship; 2) complicate disability studies, in which disabilities are often presumed to be “involuntary,” and encourage the decentering of a cis* subject; 3) encourage trans studies to decenter an able‐bodied subject; and 4) advocate for increased dialogue and the creation of alliances between trans and disability studies and movements.

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Hypatia , Volume 30 , Issue 1: Special Issue: New Conversations in Feminist Disability Studies , Winter 2015 , pp. 30 - 48
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Copyright © 2015 by Hypatia, Inc.

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Footnotes

Previous versions of this paper were presented in July 2012 at the European Association of Social Anthropologists Biennial Conference and in May 2014 at the Sexuality Studies Association Conference. I would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers of this article for their helpful insights and Kim Hall for her invaluable contribution throughout the publication process. I would also like to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) for its generous support.

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