The Social Representation Of Gender And Disability

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The social representation of gender is a constructed concept that pervades all aspects of culture; its institutions, identities, practices and the shared embodiment of human experience. Disability is a fabricated narrative of the body similar to what we understand as the fictions of gender. The evolution of gender studies from the traditional female and male gender binary description has serviced towards a stronger integration and acceptance of disabled bodies as normal. However, disabled figures still remain more precarious than others even with adaptations in human consciousness. I will begin by illustrating the meaning of precarity, performativity and discursive power followed by the analysis of gender and disability within its respective …show more content…

Since Aristotle’s explanation of women as mutilated males, women have been negatively associated with being a genetic disability. For example, the cultural hegemonic stigma of having a female child has led to female infanticide in China through their one-child policy (King, 2014). Within a sexist culture, the female embodiment is considered a disabling condition. The wholeness of the body and the sameness of its sex are socially constructed and must be called into questioned (Stryker, 2006). A study by Fiske, Cuddy, and Glick (2001), showed that housewives, disabled people, blind people, the disabled and the elderly were stereotyped as being similarly incompetent. Butler (1993) explains this occurs due to the materialization of the self in response to an embodied engagement with the social environment. Disabled body variations or transformations are out of sync with the environment which renders disability as incongruent within space and cultural expectations (Butler, 1993). According to Fine and Asch (1988), the relative privilege of heteronormative femininity are denied to disabled women. Culturally stereotyped images disable women as asexual, unfit to reproduce, overly dependent, unattractive-as generally removed from the sphere of true womanhood and feminine beauty (Garland-Thomson, 2002). The media is a widespread and commanding source of imagery within our modern visually-saturated culture. The mechanisms of the media and political institutions shape public consciousness and mainstream

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