Disability and Masculinities: Corporeality, Pedagogy and the Critique of Otherness

EDITED BY CASSANDRA LOESER,

VICKI CROWLEY, BARBARA PINI

Corporeality, Pedagogy and the Critique of Otherness

DISABILITYAND

MASCULINITIES

Disability and Masculinities

Cassandra Loeser • Vicki Crowley • Barbara Pini

Editors

Disability and

Masculinities

Corporeality, Pedagogy and the Critique of

Otherness

ISBN 978-1-137-53476-7 ISBN 978-1-137-53477-4 (eBook)

DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-53477-4

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017936991

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Editors

Cassandra Loeser

Teaching Innovation Unit

University of South Australia

Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

Barbara Pini

School of Humanities, Languages

and Social Science

Griffith University

Nathan, Queensland, Australia

Vicki Crowley

Communication, Information Studies and

Languages

University of South Australia

Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

Cassandra dedicates this book to her parents Lynette and Deane Loeser and

to her much loved grandmothers Lena Porter and Joy Sarre. This dedication

is extended, especially, to her brother Sam. She also gives thanks to the

unwavering motivation of her beautiful twin daughters, Imogen and

Zaylei.

Barbara dedicates this book to her brother Michael Pini.

And Vicki writes:

For us all—those who have come before and those still to come—we

continue to learn.

vii

Contents

List of Figures xi

List of Table xiii

Foreword xv

Introductory Essay: Disability and Masculinities:

Corporeality, Pedagogy and the Critique of Otherness xxv

Cassandra Loeser, Vicki Crowley, and Barbara Pini

Part I Of Pedagogy 1

1 ‘O Canada’ or ‘Freedom Road’?: Shoal Lake 40’s Mirror

on Global Northern Disability Studies and Public

Pedagogies 3

Leslie G. Roman and Sam Eldridge

2 A Pedagogy of Movement and Affect: A Young Man

with Autism Spectrum and Intersubjective Possibilities 45

Sarah Reddington

viii

Part II Corporeality 65

3 The Disability and Diagnosis Nexus: Transgender

Men Navigating Mental Health Care Services 67

Damien W. Riggs and Clare Bartholomaeus

4 Intersex Men, Masculinities and ‘Disabled’ Penises 85

Stephen Kerry

Part III (Re)presentation 103

5 More Than Puddles: Disability and Masculinity in

Alan Marshall’s I Can Jump Puddles 105

Dylan Holdsworth

6 Media Representations of Disabled Veterans of the

Kurdish Conflict: Continuities, Shifts and 

Contestations 125

Nurseli Yeşim Sünbüloğlu

7 Formatting Disability in Contemporary Variety TV:

Experiments with Masculinity in The Last Leg 145

Gerard Goggin

Part IV and Critical Self-Stylisation 171

8 Men, Chronic Illness and the Negotiation of

Masculinity 173

Kim Pearson and Barbara Pini

Contents

ix

9 Hearing (Dis)abled Masculinities in Australian Rules

Football: Possibilities for Pleasure 191

Cassandra Loeser and Vicki Crowley

10 Disidentification and Ingenuity in the Sex Lives of

Disabled Men 213

Sarah Smith Rainey

About the Contributors 233

Index 237

Contents

xi

Fig. 1.1 Shoal Lake 40 Winnepeg’s Diversion Blocks SL40 from

access to both reserve lands and the Trans-Canada

highway 11

Fig. 1.2 Museum of Canadian Human Rights Violations challenging

Canadian hypocrisy 20

Fig. 1.3 Shoal Lake 40 Museum of Human Rights Violations

(MHRV) Brochure p. 1–2, excerpt 21

Fig. 1.4 Water bottle storage handling facility 22

Fig. 1.5 Stewart Redsky comforting junior chief and council

members upon on the announcement of Canada’s

refusal to commit to the construction of ‘Freedom Road’

on June 25, 2015 26

Fig. 1.6 #BoilNoMore 30

Fig. 1.7 The future site of ‘Freedom Road’ 31

Fig. 2.1 Typical boy 53

Fig. 2.2 Leo’s self-portrait 54

List of Figures

xiii

Table 8.1 Description of interview sample 177

List of Table

xv

As the term ‘masculinities’ suggests a key theme in critical masculini￾ties scholarship has been identifying and exploring the multiple ways

in which being a ‘man’ is imagined and lived. In recent years, attend￾ing to differences and diversity amongst men has been given additional

impetus as a result of intersectionality theory. Despite this, a key gap

remains in terms of knowledge about masculinities and disability. The

2004 publication of the volume Gendering Disability devoted three chap￾ters to the analysis of the intersection of disability and masculinities

(Shuttleworth, Wedgewood and Wilson, 2012). The 2006 special issue

of the Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research ‘Disability and Gender’

explored how gender and disability, age, sexuality, ‘race’ and ethnicity

intersect in the experience of people with disabilities without focused

attention on men and masculinities. As much recent and not so recent

critique has attested, intersectionality is, itself problematic (Everalles &

Minear, 2010, Hewitt, 1992). It is imperative therefore, that the gaps in

the literature and theorising begin to be addressed through the publica￾tion of this first book-length study.

The chapters in Disability and Masculinities: Corporeality, Pedagogy and

the Critique of Otherness locate the embodied subject in the relations of

disability and masculinity. The book rejects disability as a deficit social

category, moving it inwards from the margins to the centre of identifica￾tory power. The authors draw on diverse methodological and theoretical

Foreword

xvi

approaches to illuminate the multiple ways that disabled masculinities

are lived, performed, represented and practiced.

As the proposed title indicates, Disability and Masculinities: Corporeality,

Pedagogy and the Critique of Otherness takes up the study of the dynamic

interplay of disability and masculinity with a focus on three inter-related

themes of corporeality, pedagogy and otherness.

An emphasis on corporeality recognises the embodied subject in the

intersection of disability and masculinity. The consideration of the dis￾abled masculine body in each of the chapters of the book offer a strat￾egy for thinking masculinities, disabilities, bodies and identities in new

ways—ways that stress the creative conduct, constraint and contingency

that go into the construction of any embodied subjectivity as an ongoing

and laborious task.

Further to corporeality, the book focuses on pedagogy and positions

the subject of disability and masculinity as a site of cultural pedagogy.

This is because the diversity of methodological, representational and ana￾lytical approaches to disabled masculinity included in this collection act

to confront and challenge historical essentialist ideations and consider

unique possibilities for creativity, resistance and the critique of other￾ness. The chapters in the book each work to affirm different knowings of

masculinity beyond dominant ideologies that normalise a specific mas￾culine body and relegate disabled masculinities the position of abnormal

‘Other’. Through focus on the intersections of disability and masculinity,

the book explores the ways that abelism, and the regime of representa￾tions that it produces in the name of ‘normalcy’, appears as a generality—

that is, as not particular, ‘special’ or noteworthy.

The chapters in this collection critique taken-for granted conceptions

of masculinity and disability, to open the possibility of otherness by chal￾lenging dichotomies of abnormal/normal, masculine/feminine. Identity

is perceived as an ongoing project of becoming, reconstructed in dialec￾tical relation with other identities that traverse categories of ‘race’ and

ethnicity, gender and sexualities, socio-economic status, age and cultural/

geographical location. A focus on the interdependence and intertwin￾ing of identities refuses essentialist rhetorics that assume identities are

linear, static and self-same, problematising those categories of self-defi￾nition that divide self from otherness. In revealing the complex multiple

Foreword

xvii

layerings in the making of masculinities, the book unsettles those histo￾ries of dichotomous thinking complicit in the relegation of disability to

the position of essential ‘Other’ of a socially privileged normative mascu￾linity. It shows how dominant conceptions of masculinity as fixed, visible

and self-present conceal the conflict and antagonism that determines the

intricate work involved in the re-production of masculinity.

Analysing the dominance of a mythic heterosexual able-bodied mascu￾linity necessarily includes an analysis of the marginalised or ‘Other’ and

what cultural, political and discursive forces operate to create instances of

marginalisation, exclusion and subordination. The book is conscious that

where there is power there are also opportunities for resistance, subver￾sion and dissidence. The book focuses on possibilities for pleasure in the

cultivation of disabled masculinities and the creativity involved in the

subversion of ideals of gendered and corporeal normalcy. In these ways,

the collected edition will build on a scholarly and political commitment

to promote new forms of theorising and knowings of the complexities

and diversities of gender, sexualities and embodiments in and across cul￾tures and societies.

Structure of the Book

Ten empirical chapters constitute this edited collection. Each of the

chapters represent an inter- and trans-disciplinary array of work that uti￾lise multiple methodologies.

The Introductory Essay is authored by Cassandra Loeser, Vicki Crowley

and Barbara Pini, the editors of this collection. It maps the theoretical,

conceptual and methodological terrain that the ten empirical chapters

in the book take up in varying ways. Divided into four sections, Loeser,

Crowley and Pini highlight the significance of speaking to and recog￾nising those issues of intersubjectivity, situatedness, subjectivity and the

lived in methodological designs and approaches that focus on research

and writing about gender and disability. The editors also reflect on the

social, political, economic and geopolitical logics that influence the mate￾riality of masculinities and disabilities and conclude with a reflection on

future directions for research.

Foreword

xviii

Following the Introductory Essay, the ten empirical chapters in the

book are presented in four parts, each which explore disability and mas￾culinities in diverse ways and contexts. These parts are ‘Of pedagogy,’

‘corporeality’, ‘representation’ ‘and critical self-stylisation’.

Chapter 1 authored by Leslie G. Roman and Sam Eldridge speaks to

the theme of pedagogy. Through the materialities of ‘medicalized colo￾nialism’ (see Chapter 1 Roman and Eldridge and also Roman, Brown,

Noble, Wainer & Young 2009), imprimaturs of ‘relational genealogies’,

‘compounding differences’ and an analytical exposition of some of the

neo-colonial conditions of the Global South within spatially-considered

places of the Global North, this agenda-framing chapter examines the

denial of human rights to the Indigenous Anishinaabe community of

Shoal Lake 40 in Canada. This includes material rights and, in particu￾lar, the right to clean drinking water and an accessible all-weather road.

Offering a range of pedagogical and theoretical applications, Roman and

Eldridge’s chapter carefully chronicles the activist campaign of the people

of Shoal Lake 40 as a case-study to detail what it can teach us about social

justice public pedagogies. It theorises masculine corporeality in ways that

go beyond neo-liberal conceptions of individual bodies to think anew

about the disabling of an entire populations such as Shoal Lake 40. It

raises the significant question of how scholars in the field of disability

studies might begin to think pedagogically and theoretically anew about

corporeal masculinities and the cultural politics of medicalized colonial￾ism. The chapter’s broader pedagogical message is that disability studies

scholars need to attend to the field’s own margins, namely isolating from

view the present-day effects of disabling human rights through lack of

clean drinking water, access to adequate health care and the resultant

debilitating conditions, disproportionately impairing Indigenous people

collectively and women and children in particular. Chapter 1 stands as

a powerful demonstration of how First Nations experience and knowl￾edge can facilitate material analyses that acutely attend to ‘bare life’ in

dis-abling policies and practices—now entrenched in routine ideas—but

which can be challenged through collaborative interventions attentive to

the repercussions and continuities of medicalized colonialism.

As with Roman and Eldrige’s chapter, pedagogy is the framing device

for the second chapter written by Sarah Reddington. She explains that the

Foreword

xix

pedagogical relationship for boys in school has largely been territorialised

by the hegemonic order with dominant boys positioned above subordi￾nated. Writing against this grain she describes the affective geographies of

one young man with autism spectrum, Leo, as he engages with other boys

in a school in Nova Scotia, Canada. While some of Leo’s schooling expe￾riences are marked by violence and harassment he resists the dominant

pedagogy taking up a masculinity that situates itself against the norma￾tive. In analysing this sensitively rendered narrative Reddington skilfully

applies Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) concept of de/reterritorialization

in order to understand how Leo finds space within school filled with pos￾sibilities rather than constraints.

The second part of the book is embedded in the notion of corporeality.

Damien W. Riggs and Clare Bartholomaeus address this notion through

an exploration of the nexus of disability and diagnosis in the context

of transgender men’s experiences of mental health. Data derived from

two surveys with Australian people who were assigned female at birth

but who do not identify as female are engaged in the paper. In a careful

and insightful analysis Riggs and Bartholomaeus detail how in a clinical

setting the focus may be solely or primarily on gender issues so mental

health concerns are obscured. They highlight the ways in which medical

professionals may fail to acknowledge the daily stresses and anxieties of

cisgenderism which may lead to mental health problems. In concluding

the chapter the authors emphasise the need for further research which

identifies how a disability framework could be usefully adopted as a lens

through which to understand the experiences of transgender men.

In Chapter 4 the theme of corporeality is taken up by Stephen Kerry

through an investigation of the still under-explored topic of intersex men

and women. In opening the discussion, Kerry addresses questions of voice

and methodology and the vexed politics of speaking about those who

have been deemed ‘other’. Xie draws on narratives of ‘intersex women’

who were surgically assigned ‘female’ at birth, but as adults either ques￾tioned their gender identity as ‘women’ or underwent a gender transition

as well as narratives of ‘intersex men’ who have undergone phalloplasty,

that is, surgery to construct, reconstruct, or ‘correct’ the penis. Kerry

argues that all the participants live with what xie labels a ‘disabled penis’,

that is, either no penis or an inadequate penis in a society in which the

Foreword