A few months ago, there was a wonderful conversation in the blogosphere about gender presentation and disability. Jumping off from bfp’s what is butch? (check out the comments for some interesting disability discussion) a range of commenters and bloggers had something to say, and it evolved to have a strong disability focus. Here are extracts from some of the posts:

From cripchick’s on gender and disability:

our bodies are objects that are not supposed to belong to us and by recognizing our genders, it implies that we own our bodies, think about them, take pleasure in them. maybe this is a big jump but to me, affirming our gender also recognizes our personhood: it says we are human and have a right to not have our bodies raped, abused, sterilized, experimented on, harvested, and more…

From Wheelchair Dancer’s Butch/Femme – Crip:

My decision to wear impractical shoes is as much a consequence of me not having to walk in them as it is a decision to participate in a particular understanding of femininity. But what do you see? A sad attempt to look normal? A pair of high heels on a woman? Or something so over the top that it slides into the devotee/fetish view of disabled female sexuality? Note that this is a risk that is only present for disabled women. It’s a long way for nondisableds to go through femme to fetish. Merely presenting certain aspects of traditional femme for a queer disabled woman puts her at risk of becoming a usually straight object of the devotee community.

From Goldfish’s Gender Presentation & Disability:

Myself, I like skirts and jewellery and what my stylist friend calls romantic clothes, but I can’t be doing with discomfort and material frivolity. I can’t cope with it in terms of pain and energy levels, and I can’t afford it. So I break the rules.

How does your gender presentation interact with your disability, your sexual orientation (or lack thereof, if that’s how you frame it) and your life history?