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Ability Variant
Written by Chloe on Sunday, December 11, 2011
I felt I needed a fresh approach for my annual intersex talk to undergraduates, in the department of psychology, in order to keep things interesting both for myself and for the audience.
The time had come for me to focus on inclusivity, since being intersexual is an incomplete descriptor. I am trying to use the accepted phrase "gender variant" as a term which includes the categories of transsexual, transgender, genderqueer, intersex, tomboy, butch, sissy, and more. I’m dissatisfied with words like intersex because discussion can get sidetracked into semantics, when in fact there is no universally agreed upon definition of the word. To be gender variant is less likely to cause semantic debate because it is more easily seen as a self identifier.
I notice that with each passing year of this annual talk I get more and more comfortable with digging a little deeper psychologically, as well as in terms of sexual function. My participation is during what the professor informally calls "sex week". Part of his introduction was to note that I have never refused to answer a question, no matter how personal. This year I found myself answering a question about the mechanics of having sex pre-surgery, as well as how I perceived that psychologically. I got quite a few laughs with my answers on that one.
My general focus was on the concept, supported by research, that self suppression has a negative impact on mental health; focusing in particular on my selective mutism as a negative consequence.
In part I am able to dig deep in these talks because of transabled.org. The more vulnerability I show, the stronger I get. The stronger I am, the more easy it is to make myself vulnerable. This positive feedback cycle does not remain within a single domain but cross reacts with all aspects of life.
After the class, the professor commented to me that he would bet on the likelihood that no one in the class would have been able to discuss these personal issues in such a venue, and certainly not with the ease that I show. We discussed how a good part of this is to continually challenge myself to prove that selective mutism is gone forever. He assured me that any nervousness I had, which I did, was in no way evident.
He also told me, as usual, that my presence is always rated by the students as the best part of the abnormal psychology course. Yes that’s right… I am a specimen of abnormal psychology. Sometimes I have paranoid thoughts of being a freak show, cleverly disguised as an academic subject of study. Here is a photo of the abnormal specimen being studied that day, laughing maniacally:
I haven’t thought it through yet, but I wonder whether there is any place for a term such as "ability variant" that is automatically inclusive of people with BIID, physical or psychological impairments, invisible disabilities, differently abled, transabled, apotemnophilia, etc. It is easy to get into semantic arguments regarding whether somebody is or is not disabled. Personally, I would agree with the assertion that BIID is just another disability. It IS disabling. However, I have noticed that some people assume that if you have BIID then it must automatically mean that you are NOT disabled. I’ll see how it sits with me to call myself gender variant and ability variant. I have gender variance and ability variance…
Two days after the talk I went to the intersex support group. At dinner afterwards I sat next to the facilitator, who also used to be my psychotherapist. It is always a lot of fun for us to talk. He is one of those people with whom I can talk incessantly and never run out of subjects of mutual interest. One of these subjects is disability, since one of his specialties is sex therapy for people with disabilities. He has several clients with paraplegia, and he has offered to teach me some relevant techniques.
We had a discussion about how he was trained in teaching the techniques by a group of people with paraplegia or quadriplegia, including, for example, demonstrations of how someone with quadriplegia can have orgasms. He had been asked at the beginning of the training "What is YOUR disability?" The point is that everyone has a disability, which can indeed impact one’s sexuality. I have several disabilities which impact my sexuality.
Here is the problem with the term "differently abled". Everyone has different abilities, so the term seems a little redundant. One could make the same argument about ability variant; however, to me it seems to carry more of a connotation that one’s ability is atypical. I brought this idea into our discussion, and my disability sexpert seemed to like it.
So, here is the question. Is there any advantage for us to be categorised as "ability variant", such that we are unambiguously in the same category as PWDs? And, if so, is there a better phrase to convey the same meaning?
Feel free to shred the idea! My self esteem can take it…
Tags: Ability Variant, Abnormal Psychology, Gender Variant, Semantic Arguments
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8 Comments
I feel like the term “ability variant” is almost too general. You might as well categorize people as “normal” and “different,” and I feel that people want further classification inside “different.” The question, then, is how to do it in a politically correct way.
@Sean: Thank you for that. How much has this phrase caught on? I like it that the authors of the seminal paper have already coined the acronym PFD for Person with Functional Diversity. However, I did find their insistent use of gender binary language rather ironic.
@Shadow: Yes, I agree that many people desire more specificity in the classification. However, there is always a hierarchy of classification, and I was looking for something that is automatically inclusive of both PWBs and PWDs. It seems that PFDs might be exactly that. I may identify as a MWC (Meson With Charm) but sometimes I may wish to recognise my kinship with baryons, and talk about hadrons in general.
4 On 12 December, 2011, Sean said:
@Chloe, that particular term has not yet taken off as much as it could have. But there are a lot of discussions around these concepts happening. Gender binary – yes, very ironic. I find most people have problems thinking outside of their immediate life-experiences. For some, it’s simply a lack of awareness – to be honest, before you, I never really put much thought to a non-binary view of gender. But for others, it’s a mental block
To me, PWD or PFD, it still connotates difference, outside of “normal”, even segregation. We all are different, we all have impairments, so the labels really are redundant. Everybody is PWD or PFD. It’s all a matter of perception and situation in which our impairment becomes a disability. When I was doing “disability” presentation in a school, it was mainly about diversity and making the kids understand that we all have impairments and those are sometimes disability but that everybody really wants the same thing – being happy, useful, loved, accepted – and that those things are more important, making us more “alike” than different. And that we need to look beyond the labels. Really, why do we need labels? Why are we so stuck on putting people in need boxes? Why can’t we call people by their names, only by their names? It would be so much better.
Anything, as long as it isn’t an abbreviation, please!
The only real inclusive term is the name of a person without anything that might be understood or misused as a judgment. Chloe is Chloe and that is good. Chloe is not just a PAV (person with ability variant).
And I think about how it translates into other languages. Not even transabled can be translated into German, for example.
@Elisabeth & Phil: I understand what you are saying and where you are coming from. Your points are valid. Any box, and the label attached thereto, is necessarily arbitrary, and the edges are necessarily fuzzy.
However, having acknowledged that, we simply cannot communicate here other than by words, all of which are merely an approximate symbol, or label, corresponding to something we perceive. Yes, Sean is Sean; which adds up to a great deal more than his BIID. Nevertheless, on this website it is valuable information to know that he needs to be paraplegic. That information provides context for what he says here. Without that information we are missing something. Yet “paraplegic” by necessity is just one more of those labels for an arbitrary box with fuzzy edges.
We may all fit into millions of different categories; and we may never be fully described by any arbitrarily large finite number of categories. That does not negate the value of those categories in conveying information to each other about who we are.
Chloe! I have really loved reading about you and did really enjoy the Natgeo.piece.I,have had biid since 12 70 now. Bob.C.
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1 On 11 December, 2011, Sean said:
Functional Diversity.
This is a debate that has been happening in the “disability community” for a long time. The concept of functional diversity is one of many that express the idea that impairments aren’t fixed in time, that everyone at one point or another develop an impairment, which may or may not turn out to be a disability.
No need to reinvent the wheel here ;)