“Hey, where’s my low-key sexist objectification?”: A blind woman's reflections on being banished and liberated from normative femininity and the gaze

Abstract

In this autoethnographic paper, I present some personal reflections on negotiating tricky identity-related terrain as sociocultural beliefs about disability, femininity, impairment, and sexuality interact with my embodiment as a blind woman. This has primarily to do with being in some ways liberated and in other ways banished from both normative femininity and the gaze. I describe the complicated double-binds in my own experience with seeking belonging, that is, social and sexual legitimacy against the backdrop of a prohibitive gender system rooted in visual culture, which might be resonant for other blind and disabled women. I also consider the implications for blind and disabled women of being positioned as “transcenders” of visual culture and the gender regime. I suggest that, rather than liberation, this positioning might be felt by disabled women as further marginalisation, a banishment from acceptability and legitimacy.