p2182 -
Historicizing "Compulsory Able-bodiedness": The History of Sexology meets Queer Disability Studies
Thursday, June 1, 2017: 2:00 PM
RSVLT 213 (Hofstra University)
In this paper, I argue that histories of sexology would benefit from an engagement with queer disability studies. Here I draw on my work concerning early twentieth century German feminist sexologists, and show how Robert McRuer’s influential essay “Compulsory Able-bodiedness and Queer/Disabled Existence” (2006) enabled me to analyze sexology and its effects in new ways. In his essay, McRuer maintains that “compulsory heterosexuality is contingent on compulsory able-bodiedness,” and deconstructs the ways in which “the system of able-bodiedness that produces disability is thoroughly interwoven with the system of compulsory heterosexuality that produces queerness (301-302).” The persuasiveness of his analysis led me to pay closer attention to the repeated ways feminist sexologists disavowed the “crippled,” the “feebleminded” (schwachsinnig), the syphilitic, and the alcoholic—of all genders, races, and sexual orientations—in their texts, and marked out these figures as illegitimate sexual subjects. Reading their work in light of McRuer’s essay attuned me to a largely unremarked legacy of early twentieth century sexology: what we might now call its relentless ableism, that is, its insistence on a narrow vision of health as a fundamental precondition not only for sexual health, but also sexual agency. With specific reference to feminist sexologists, McRuer’s arguments led me to trace the connections feminist sexologists established between ability and agency in their demands for “healthy” women’s rights to a self-determined sexual life. Unpacking this history is important because it forces scholars to consider the ways in which ableism has insidiously informed--and continues to underwrite--sexual science and sexual reform politics.