On cripness, gender and sex.

Haven't written anything here in ages, other writing has been consuming a lot of time, as has plain living.
Weeks ago I had a plan to follow up on cripchick and wheelchairdancer's blog posts on disability and gender, I wrote something but didn't think I did well. Today, as I was reading through old things lying around on my harddrive I realised it might have been okay anyway so here it is.

Following in the footsteps of cripchick and wheelchairdancer I will try my best to write about my take on ’crip’ as an identity, its relation to power and sex.

Firstly, I would like to say that it has taken me a while to find myself as a crip-girl. Honestly, my disability even though it is at times very crippling has not been a major issue for me and not until the last year’s part of my identity as such.

I credit this to my childhood and my ideas of myself growing up. Even if I knew there was something different with me, I was never told that different equalled bad.

Growing up in a very including Christian environment I was often told my disability was a blessing. Later I came to know that was not always the take on disabilities amongst other Christians and certainly not amongst other Pentecostals, as my family was.

Growing up in a Christian environment also meant that the ideas of sex and sexuality were different than others. I often found it puzzling that Pentecostals would devote themselves so physically to God and the Spirit while at church but be afraid to touch subjects that I thought alike, lust and pleasure. It was not rare when I grew up to see women hiss the name ‘Jesus’ between gritted teeth as their bodies shock. And when finding out about the Spirit myself I likened it to an orgasm.

Because I had always been told my disability was a blessing, meaning that God had greater plans for me and brother and had let us live even if it wasn’t possible, I grew up believing strongly, and still do - that all that is good within me comes from God. Hence, the love I felt for both boys and girls wasn’t a trouble.
Finding out I was both a crippled and a bisexual I started to asses myself at a very early age, thinking about what I like and disliked. Linking fantasises desires and wishes together I also discovered I was Dominant. (Will this odd-ness never end?)Again, seeing that it was in me and was a good thing since it sprung from love and also couldn’t exist without a submissive counterpart and a consensus from that person, I accepted it.

As a Dominant-crip-pseudo-lesbian I struggled to find an identity that fit me. Combining the weakness and frailness of my psychical condition with the force of my mind and my ‘sinful’ love for other women.

For a substantial period of time I was on growth-hormones since I was way too short for my age. I am still pretty short but without the hormones would have been even shorter. The hormones, a jolly mixture of steroids and testosterone, sent my body off on a post-adolescences joyride. I bulked up like I had never done before; I was longer frail in appearance even though my body was.
In an attempt to mend the gap between my physical appearance and my mind I went into a period of being a very butch girl. Shaving my head and trying desperately to find out where this rollercoaster was to take me I went from crazy unisex tops and shirts to dresses and back again. All the time feeling uncomfortable in an appearance that I didn’t know.

Getting of the hormones I dropped 8 kg to 38kg for my final 145 cm and finally recognised what I saw in the mirror. I went back to the clothes that I had worn as a girl, I indulged in skirts and flowery tops, flaunted my tits and tried my very best to make my body sexual and owned by me, rather than an asexual object owned by doctors and syringes filled with steroids.

As a crip-girl I believe that is my biggest struggle. To believe that my body can be desired through the eyes of others. That it isn’t something freaky but something hot, mostly because I myself through active choice in my appearance and manners make it so.
I thrive on being raunchy and outspoken about my body and my sexuality, since it breaks a long lived idea of crippled people as asexual, making use of it as I would like. Learning to make it work its best to give me and my lovers the most pleasure and so and so.

Through this process of ‘returning to the roots’ I discovered my last add-on identity so far. I was not only a Dominat-crip-pseudo-lesbian; I was also a ‘femme’.
Putting my ‘invalid’ body on display because I chose to, doing it with the tools of a feminine appearance altered to fit my needs (see crip-chick’s post on altering the tools of femininity, such as clothes, to fit the needs of our bodies) allowing myself, with very little physical force, to Dominate through the mind, and enjoying that, gave me the cornerstones of the subversion that now constitute my femme-identity.

However even though I am a ‘fiercely femme Lady’ according to beloved Sister Hillevi, I find I am rarely viewed as that by people who don’t know me. Again it’s that asexual image of disabled people and certainly disabled women that gets me. Also, my ‘classically feminine attire’ combined with a well expressed Christian faith often boxes me in as a sweet-Christian-girl. Not to say that I am not but there is certainly more to me than meets the eye in that sense.

In order for a discussion to take place around disability, gender and identity society needs to acknowledge disabled persons identities not only as homogenous disabled group but see that all kinds of identities fit within the disabled ‘community’ as well as in the able bodied.
That even though I am a disabled person it is not equal to my disability being the cornerstone of my identity.

My crip-identity as it is today took me years and years to build and it was through my other identities that a sense of subversion of my crippled body arose.
When I call myself a crip today, it gives me a space to joke about the quirks of my body, my spasm, my freakishly tensed muscles, a space where I can promote photos as the one here on the blog where I kiss the chrome on my walker.
Also, it gives me a space where I find strength in a world that is made to fit the able bodied, it gives me a sense of community and support, a renewed sense of what my body needs and strength to acknowledge that these needs are different than my able bodied friend’s.

(Might be brainy, might just be ramblings)