Abstract
Based on A. Revathi’s The Truth About Me: A Hijra Life-Story (2010) and Kate Bornstein’s A Queer and Pleasant Danger (2012), the paper explores the possible connections that arise between the two autobiographies while articulating the similar praxis of living beyond gender norms, though in very distinctive cultural contexts. The comparability of the texts provides grounds to construe “queer” and “disability” in the transsexual experiences as symptomatic but not solely based on the common negation of “compulsory heterosexuality” and “compulsory able-bodiedness” as imposed social constructs. The process of “transgendering” (Ekins and King 34) as initiated by the sense of disability/queerness of being in the “wrong body” is also explored through the study of the narratives. Both Revathi and Bornstein are affected by an innate desire for a "feminine" form of existence as well as the social injunction of following the dictates of "normality" and "ableism" vis-à-vis the gender attributed at birth. The surgical and hormonal transformations do not lead to a psychosocial “rectification” and may culminate in a dysfunctional womanhood. Revathi’s unrequited love and failed marriage and Bornstein’s inability to "qualify" as a lesbian will be read as instances of how the inadequacy of social structures is misconstrued as a "gender-impairment" in the individual and instituted as "hijra" or "butch."
Highlights
Queer-Trans and Crip-Trans: Further Possibilities. These references to Disability Studies to understand transsexuality, work towards a possible Cripistemology of the Queer that perceives resistance to compulsory heterosexuality and compulsory able-bodiedness as arising out of the primary need of an every-day process of selfarticulation contributing to a continuous process of self-comprehension, and secondary to a more constitutive form of existence
The diversified nature of both the fields of studies cannot obliterate the above examples from the transgender narratives that pertain to Disability Studies
The present study hopes to demonstrate that in narrating the everyday in the transgender situation, it is not possible to operate on the binary of conformity and non-conformity, and often there is a problematic confluence of both
Summary
Affiliated scholars reject a firm distinction between impairment and disability because they view biology and culture as impinging upon each other” (Goodley 14) Such a study derives from the distance/differences between the spaces of lived experiences and theoretical paradigms. Non-heteronormative experiences can be symptomatic of but not solely based on the common negation of “compulsory heterosexuality” and “compulsory able-bodiedness” (2) as imposed social constructs This inquiry has already been initiated by McRuer. Such exploration will contribute towards creating a relational space between Transgender Studies - which includes discourses on most gender-based marginalized identity-positions - and Disability Studies. The study will chart a trajectory that does not rely on the appeal of the unproblematic idea of resistance but takes into 49 account several situational complexities, deconstructing the binaries of the normative/non-normative or ablism/disablism, and possible newer binaries like that of normalcy/resistance
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