Thank you Grant! And I appreciated your footnote explaining how you are weighing through the identity-first vs person-first language choices :). Across the board, it is easy to get legalistic about these things, and I appreciate your demonstrating a posture that to me sounds like ,"I hear you and value that, yet I want to point to this truth too!"
Disabled and queer here! As someone for whom this is deeply personal: this is lovely work. Disfigured was central as I developed a framework around how I exist in the world, and I love the parallels you draw here. I often get tired of the "disability as a model for LGBTQ+ experience" conversation, particularly in theological spaces, so thank you for focusing more on the overlap in sociocultural systems here than the lived experience (in which there are absolutely plenty of parallels!). I have spent a loooot of time camping out in these spaces processing through/reconciling the various aspects of my identity so it's cool to see someone else doing it re: this specific text. :)
You absolutely didn't ask, but if you're interested, Robert McRuer's "Compulsory Able-bodiedness and Queer/Disabled Experience" is an excellent little critical theory-based look at the similarity in the cultural systems and identity structures.
Thank you Grant! And I appreciated your footnote explaining how you are weighing through the identity-first vs person-first language choices :). Across the board, it is easy to get legalistic about these things, and I appreciate your demonstrating a posture that to me sounds like ,"I hear you and value that, yet I want to point to this truth too!"
Disabled and queer here! As someone for whom this is deeply personal: this is lovely work. Disfigured was central as I developed a framework around how I exist in the world, and I love the parallels you draw here. I often get tired of the "disability as a model for LGBTQ+ experience" conversation, particularly in theological spaces, so thank you for focusing more on the overlap in sociocultural systems here than the lived experience (in which there are absolutely plenty of parallels!). I have spent a loooot of time camping out in these spaces processing through/reconciling the various aspects of my identity so it's cool to see someone else doing it re: this specific text. :)
You absolutely didn't ask, but if you're interested, Robert McRuer's "Compulsory Able-bodiedness and Queer/Disabled Experience" is an excellent little critical theory-based look at the similarity in the cultural systems and identity structures.
Thank you! This was so encouraging to hear, and I’m happy to get your recommendations for further reading!