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Paper short abstract

Narratives often stigmatize disabled people as pitiable or entitled, justifying economic, emotional, and physical violence against us. This paper counters those stories, exploring ones that center on disability as a natural form of being, and arguing the “normal” body is a cultural construct.

Paper long abstract

Narratives often stigmatize people with disabilities, suggesting we deserve pity or are entitled freeloaders who expect to be supported by government funds. In such narratives disability is considered unnatural, abnormal, a defect that suggests moral and physical flaws, pervasive ideas that justify oppressive social and political practices against disabled people. As a result of these beliefs, we often endure economic, emotional, and physical violence and microaggressions due to ableist notions that suggest people with disabilities are somehow lesser than (temporarily) able-bodied people. Further, people with disabilities are assumed to be unhappy with our bodies, since we should clearly desire a “normal” healthy body.

These narratives do not consider that disability is a natural state of being and part of normal human variation, or that we could find joy because of our disabilities as opposed to in spite of them. This critical and creative presentation will explore the concept of disability joy in personal narratives, rethinking ideas of the “natural” body, embodied joy, and what it means to experience nature. While nature and the natural world are often considered inaccessible for people with disabilities, narratives reveal how it may it be a source of disability joy and a way to suggest that body variation is natural while the idea of the “normal” body is a cultural construction.