A part I find especially notable about Eli Claire\u2019s \u201cPride and Exile\u201d is the section that involves doctor\u2019s treatment of kids with disabilities. Particularly, how the pursuit of a supposed \u201ccure\u201d or \u201canswer\u201d can lead to individuals being harmed. In the text Claire states, \u201ctake for instance public stripping, the medical practice of stripping disabled children to their underwear and examining them in front of large groups of doctors, medical students, physical therapists, and rehabilitation specialists. They have the child walk back and forth. They squeeze her muscles. They watch his gait, muscle tension, footfall, back curvature. They take notes and talk amongst themselves about what surgeries and therapies they might recommend\u201d (Claire 103).<\/p>\r\n
Disabled kids are treated like a spectacle; as if they are oddities or animals. They are forced to expose themselves to the judgmental glances of people who will only see them as people who need to be changed or \u201cfixed.\u201d They are meant to bend to the wills of superiors who only want to mold them in their image. In a similar fashion, people in the LGBTQ+ community are meant to prove their queerness. They break down their walls of protection and sacrifice their comfort to appease an audience. They must prove their otherness is real, but at the same time get judged for their otherness due to it not being socially conventional. Both disabled and queer people are seen as malleable. Whether it is with a miracle cure, physical force, or conversion therapy, institutions, the public, or higher ups only want to see marginalized communities be the \u201csame as everyone else.\u201d Even if there is no such thing as an ideal human being, there will always be notions made that everyone should fit into that box to preserve years of humanities built-up fragility and sensitivity.<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A part I find especially notable about Eli Claire\u2019s \u201cPride and Exile\u201d is the section that involves doctor\u2019s treatment of kids with disabilities. Particularly, how the pursuit of a supposed \u201ccure\u201d or \u201canswer\u201d can lead to individuals being harmed. In the text Claire states, \u201ctake for instance public stripping, the medical practice of stripping disabled … Continue reading Poison Touch<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5727,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[344663],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall-2025"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5727"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1484"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1489,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1484\/revisions\/1489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}