What might be worse than being openly insulted, mocked, or undermined? Being ignored. Perhaps.

In her article Longing for the Male Gaze, Jennifer Bartlett explores the privilege of sexual desirability and her perceived lack of it. Bartlett—who is diagnosed with cerebral palsy—underlines how her disability has made her invisible to men, noting that able-bodied women possibly take for granted the daily harassment they receive.

Bartlett’s envy and longing for what others see as a constant assault on women, opens up a set of questions that do not have easy answers. Is she conflating sexual harassment with male attention? Is her perspective on desirability and harassment valid, given that it’s through the lens of a disabled woman? Should able-bodied woman empathize with her situation? 11&more explore these questions and more.

Male attention or sexual harassment—not a zero sum game

Joy: This is a fascinating article and powerful in many ways; it adds a lot to the conversation on disability, desirability, and public perception. But I wish it were framed in a way that did a better job of distinguishing between feeling sexually attractive to your gender of choice and rape culture.

She doesn’t want to be “sexually invisible,” yet she frames the whole article as if the only other alternative is dangerous, even violent, harassment.

Similarly, she tries to distinguish between the attention that is “gross…uncomfortable… scary and tedious…[even] traumatic,” but then proceeds to make it seem as if that is the only option if she wants men to look at her and not to feel excluded.

I refuse to accept that those are the only two available options.

Jia Jia: I don’t think she’s conflating male attention with sexual harassment. She’s not in a position to do so. Her point seems to be that as a person with a disability, she is simply not desirable to anyone (you can argue whether that’s actually true, but it’s her felt experience).

She’s essentially asking able-bodied women to check our privilege of being desirable in the first place.

That’s not the same as saying that sexual harassment is okay. She’s simply saying that it’s better than our treatment of people with disabilities. That rings true to me.

I didn’t read her piece as advocacy for a binary social choice between harassment and exclusion; it’s simply an accurate description of the current reality. And I think it’s brave to call that out at the risk of complicating the political waters of gender politics. I read her piece as a cry for help. It’s up to us now, the able-bodied people with the privilege of being desirable, to fight the good fight against sexual harassment on the one hand and against our own prejudices towards people with disabilities on the other.

Stephanie: I think she does conflate harassment with male attention in that she lists examples of sexual harassment she hasn’t experienced, and includes in that list a line about how no one has hit on her in a bar either. Similar to Joy, my discomfort with this article is that the message seems to be “don’t complain, because my situation is worse,” which is a line some misogynists use against feminism in the developed world (see Jessica Velenti’s article).

My argument would be that we should feel empathy for her and for women who are sexually harassed—it’s not “either or,” and yet she appears at points to compare the two situations as if they are a zero sum game.

I reject that premise wholeheartedly. I don’t think one type of treatment is better than the other, or preferable; both are unacceptable and result from de-humanizing the person in front of you. I feel this lady’s cry for help, and her struggle to feel sexually desirable, to be visible and treated as an equal, but the article loses potency for me when she attempts to “compare” disadvantage. I’m fully there to fight the good fight for everyone, I don’t need to be told I’m “lucky” if someone finds me desirable enough to sexually harass on the street.

Provocation or misconception about sexual harassment?

Elyssa: I was moved by this piece: I felt the struggle of a woman trying to find her own identity. This piece felt authentic with all its contradictions, lack of conclusions, a complex portrait of real human existence for this one woman.

It doesn’t matter what I personally think about issues that her piece grazes against. Her experience is hers, and it’s an uncommon voice that brings me to uncomfortable territory; she makes the familiar seem all at once unfamiliar.

For example, cat calling on the street. How many ways can I see it? I don’t have to agree with her position as something that could be desirable, but I think it’s important to just see the perspective. Maybe there’s more to the picture than I was aware of? Maybe there’s a whiff of her experience that will chip slightly at my own sense of reality? What do the author and I have in common? What is impossible to share?

Carin: I believe that any woman who has ever experienced any degree of sexual harassment could never agree with the writer’s perspective. I think she was being deliberately provocative if slightly ignorant.

Harassment is not attention. It is invasion. Harassment is not interest. It is humiliation. It does not build up a woman: it breaks down and damages her way beyond the initial interaction.

Harassment continues because our response is inconsistent, often hesitant, rather than immediate, assertive, even angry. But this response is always justified. In this issue we must be united.

The need for empathy—for those with disabilities and those without

Nicole: I feel for her, but I don’t think she’s feeling for others and that’s holding her back.

She admits that she’s experienced sexual harassment herself, that it made her feel uncomfortable and was frightening, even though she didn’t find it traumatizing. But she seems to lack the empathy and perspective needed to imagine what it’s like for women to feel this on a regular basis.

It’s almost as though she feels the need to respond to something because she is choosing to allow herself to be defined by her disability. And with this frame of reference, she’s operating in “my life is always going be worse than yours” mode, which neither helps her nor us.

Full disclaimer: I grew up doing martial arts at a place called Break the Barriers, Inc., so my experiences with people with disabilities is likely very different than a lot of people’s. They actively discouraged defining yourself by your disability. And I also know two people who have cerebral palsy in the same way she describes herself (slight ambulatory impairment and some difficulty doing certain movements) who are married, one with a daughter. They are black belts. That said, both are men, so maybe their experience is a little different.

I will also mention that while I agree that there cannot only be the two options of sexual invisibility or rape culture, I do understand her point about the condescending and patronizing, “Good on you for making something of yourself since you have a disability. You’re so inspiring *pat on back*” garbage that people often espouse. I have another friend who came in steaming mad the other day because, according to “etiquette,” people are supposed to kneel to introduce themselves—this friend is in a wheelchair—so that they are “on his level.” He found it beyond insulting.

Jia Jia: I think that attitude—of treating people with disabilities differently—is exactly what she’s writing about. In the same breath that we ask her to empathize with the daily sexual harassment that able-bodied women like us might suffer, we should empathize with her situation of never being seen as a full human being. Having people look past you every day, talk about you in the third person, patronize you because they think you are retarded, and never desiring you has got to be a horrible experience. Of course, there doesn’t have to only ever be two choices, but right now reality’s pretty binary. Us denying that and asking her to de-conflate her gender politics or get a better outlook on life doesn’t help the situation.

Her piece makes me think more about my own behavior around people with disabilities, and I’m thankful for that. Hopefully, I’ll treat them with deeper consideration for who they really are and their abilities at the same time as I go up against disrespectful sexual attention.

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Edited by: Neha and Jia Jia
Participation from: Carin, Elyssa, Jia Jia, Joy, Nicole

Tags:  desire disability feminism gender sex social expectations violence