I’m Just Not Impressed

It’s not just LGBTQ and feminist related materials. Disability and sex related materialshave also been de-ranked, it seems. 

Can’t say I’m surprised, to be honest. Some of the worst street harassment I ever encountered related to sexuality was when I was dating a male wheelchair user in college. It didn’t help that we were both visibly freaky and arguably genderbending to a degree. But openly sexual and visibly disabled people are threatening. A man in a wheelchair with an obvious girlfriend is a threat to the widespread infantalism of people with disabilities. It is a threat to the idea that appearance and visible ability is valued. The idea that a chick with big tits might be interested in a guy who can’t walk is a threat to patriarchy (I mean, can he even, like, have, you know, sex?). Likewise, the idea that an able-bodied man might be interested in a woman who is “deformed” and imperfect. If we can accept people regardless of their perceived (and easily perceivable) “flaws”, then maybe we have to accept fat people and non-white people and others that don’t fit the societal ideal of beauty and mateability.

And heavens forfend that a person with a disability dare to express any sort of non-heterosexual non-vanilla sexual desires. Even if American society can wrap it’s little brain around the idea of a nice hetero relationship involving some sort of tragic heroic sacrifice on the part of the able-bodied partner, anything beyond that is cause for collective panic.

So, yeah. Count me among the not surprised that a search for sex and disability on Amazon turns up more results about developmental disability in sex offenders than it does guides to help people with disabilities have sex lives.

1. Children are taught how to read media, including what characters to relate to and what they are supposed to enjoy.

2. Media perpetuates the notion that boys don’t want to/cannot relate to girl characters.

3. Therefore, boys are never taught to relate to girl characters.

Girls, otoh, are expected to learn how to relate to boys/men as the default – we are taught from early on that we can/should be able to relate to boy characters. Even in stories that are carefully structured to have both boys and girls (and therefore appeal across the board) and where the girls are “strong” characters (i.e., they are more than just a blank stereotype), the boys are still the leaders. In the Magic Treehouse books, the third person narration is focused on Jack’s POV and internal thoughts and how he relates to Annie. Harry Potter may need Hermione’s brains, but he’s still the lead. Diego needed to balance out Dora, because heavens forfend three and four year old boys like a “girls show”. Even such basic toys as blocks and legos default as “boy” toys. Again – heaven’s forfend something be gender neutral.

I could go on about this forever, but it stuck in my craw this morning. General purpose, “gender neutral” narration is almost always male directed. Even when it involves men harming killing women (or their children or themselves), men still get to determine the narrative.

*Perhaps not strictly speaking a syllogism (If A, then C. B is A. Therefore B is C), but work with me here.