Create Your Own Footnote: “Integrating Disability, Transforming Feminist Theory” in Relation to Conversations of Otherness

“Depression, anorexia, and agoraphobia are female-dominant, psychophysical disabilities that exaggerate normative gender roles. Feminine cultural practices such as footbinding, clitorectomies, and corseting, as well as their less hyperbolic costuming rituals such as stiletto high heels, girdles, and chastity belts—impair women’s bodies and restrict their physical agency, imposing disability on them.” 

–“Integrating Disability, Transforming Feminist Theory” Rosemarie Garland-Thompson, pp.17

As argued above, the patriarchy is both a root and a determinant of disability within forms of otherness, though it specifically regards femininity. The link between disability and otherness is further illustrated and expanded upon in “Integrating Race: Transforming Feminist Disability Studies”, where the authors point out that:

"Scholarship in these areas reveals how the bodyminds of people of color, women, and trans, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming people are pathologized and marked with discourses of disability even when such individuals are not legally, medically, or socially, recognized as disabled" (Shalk and Kim, 11).

Otherness, in the patriarchal system, is intrinsically linked to disability, though the example given by Garland-Thompson only pertains to femininity as a form of otherness in the patriarchal system. Disability in itself is defined by otherness, as it is considered a divergence from the norm (Kocój, 1). As defined by the Oxford English Dictionary, disability is, “A physical or mental condition that limits a person's movements, senses, or activities; (as a mass noun) the fact or state of having such a condition” (“Disability, N., Sense 4.”). In addition to being intrinsic to disability in itself, forms of otherness – in this case, femininity – impose a state “that limits a person’s movements, senses, or activities” (“Disability, N., Sense 4.”). Female-dominant psychophysical disabilities, as listed by Garland-Thompson, are defined by their limitations, directly and indirectly, imposed by the patriarchy, as also suggested by Gilbert and Gubar in “Infection in the Sentence” from The Madwoman in the Attic (85-86). However, her listing of “hyperbolic costuming rituals” (Garland-Thompson, 17)  as examples weakens her argument by diminishing women's agency. Women may choose to wear stilettos, girdles, and even chastity belts (Cox News Service) for their own reasons, and by portraying these examples only as impositions of the patriarchy, the agency of women who use or enjoy these items outside of the demands of the patriarchal system is diminished. Certainly, Garland-Thompson considered these examples in terms of how they have historically been used as tools of oppression (Vandenberg, 175-176) (Lenz, 4). Still, by singularly representing them as such, she limits women's agency to express femininity in various ways, diminishing her argument. 

Works Cited

“Disability, N., Sense 4.” Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford UP, September 2023,

https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/1276761665. 

Garland-Thompson, Rosemarie. “Integrating Disability, Transforming Feminist Theory.”

National Women’s Study Association Journal, vol. 14, no. 3, 2002.

Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and

the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. Yale University Press, 1979, pp. 45–92.

Kocój, Ewa. “European Representations of Others: Reflecting on the ‘Us and Them. An

Intricate History of Otherness’ Exhibition and Book.” Anthropos, vol. 108, no. 1, 2013, pp. 273–77. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23510281. 

Lenz, Amelia. “The Shoes and The Dance: The Tragedy of The Anxiety of Authorship

within Margaret Atwood’s Lady Oracle.” ENG 280: Perspectives in Literature, https://cdvl15.wixsite.com/amelia-lenz/post/the-shoes-and-the-dance-the-tragedy-of-the-anxiety-of-authorship-within-margaret-atwood-s-lady-orac, 4 October 2024.

Service, Cox News. “Modern Chastity Belts Symbolize Commitment.” Greensboro News

and Record, 6 May 2001, greensboro.com/modern-chastity-belts-symbolize-commitment/article_0554a028-aa7f-5b

Vandenberg, Allison. “Toward a Phenomenological Analysis of Historicized Beauty

Practices.” Women’s Studies Quarterly, vol. 46, no. 1/2, 2018, pp. 167–80. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2642116987-8ccc-d512e7fe3b3e.html.