Metaphorically Speaking: Ableist Metaphors in Feminist Writing: EBSCOhost

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Title: Metaphorically Speaking: Ableist Metaphors in Feminist Writing. By:

Schalk, Sami, Disability Studies Quarterly, 10415718, Fall2013, Vol. 33,
Issue 4
Database: Education Source

Metaphorically Speaking: Ableist Metaphors in Feminist

Writing

Listen

American Accent

This article examines the use of metaphors of disability in feminist texts. Starting from an
understanding of feminism as a movement to end sex and gender oppression in the lives of
all people, a movement aligned with anti-racist, anti-homophobic, anti-classist and antiableist movements, I make connections between sexist and ableist rhetoric in order to
expose the political and intellectual repercussions for feminist work that relies upon
metaphors of disability. I argue that most current uses of disability metaphors promote an
ideology of impairment as a negative form of embodiment. In order to articulate my claims,
I provide a close reading of extended disability metaphors used in work by bell hooks and
Tania Modleski, identifying the implications about disability and problems that occur in their
overall arguments when the metaphors are read from a disability studies perspective. The
article ends by offering recommendations for a feminist philosophy of language, calling for
a reflective political commitment by feminists to interrogate our theoretical assumptions and
consider the effects of our language so as to prevent further marginalization of
disempowered groups in general and disabled people in particular.
Keywords: metaphor; language; ableism; feminism
Language is so central, so fundamental to social interaction, to our becoming who we are
that no one interested in influencing and inflecting their society can ignore it.
--Margaret Gibbon, Feminist Perspectives on Language
Introduction
I first began to think critically about disability and language--particularly metaphor--after two
experiences that occurred in the summer of 2010, one during the 2010 Society for

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Disability Studies (SDS) conference and one immediately following it. In a panel session at
the SDS conference that year, I had presented a paper on bell hooks's theories of love and
how they can be applied to people with disabilities. A small portion of my paper established
that bell hooks clearly did not intend her theories to apply to people with disabilities, for
these theories focused exclusively on issues of gender and race. In the paper, I had offhandedly noted that a critical analysis of disability did not seem to be in hooks's political
consciousness at all since, in her book on men and love, she referred to men as "emotional
cripples" (hooks 2004, 27). During the question-and-answer period of the session, I was
surprised that the majority of the questions from the people in attendance were directed at
me in regard to hooks's use of the term "cripple." The disability scholars and activists in the
room asked me: "Are you planning on pursuing her disability rhetoric further in future
work?" "How can a black feminist known for her intersectional and radical politics use such
blatantly ableist language?" I had no real answers. Two days later, I flew home.
Seated next to me on the small airplane was a woman who, along with her two sons
seated in the row in front of us, was flying to visit relatives. When I explained to her that I
had been in Philadelphia for a disability studies conference, she told me that her youngest
son--the one with the buzz cut, sitting in the window-seat, furiously playing video games-was Deaf. This remark led us into a brief discussion about the role of nondisabled allies in
a disability community after which we settled into our respective books as the plane took
flight. When the plane landed, the woman's sons burst out of their seats and headed up the
aisle, without waiting for her to catch up. She and I stood a few people behind them in the
very slow-moving line to disembark. Just before we reached the door, the pilot emerged
from the cock-pit to help the flight attendants load a wheelchair for a man at the front of the
line. My seat-mate's Deaf son, still staring down at his handheld video game player,
continued to walk forward, following his older brother. "Hold-on a minute, son," the pilot
commanded. The boy continued to walk past the pilot, without looking up from the screen
of his game player. "Sorry, he's Deaf," my seat-mate said loudly over the shoulders of the
people ahead of us. The pilot looked back at her, laughing: "It's OK. Mine are too. Those
video games affect their hearing."
The two interactions that I describe above offer important lessons about the relationship
between language and ableism. In fact, these interactions motivated me to seriously reflect
upon the ways that our ability to recognize diverse embodiment is limited by figurative
language that conceptually distances us from the reality of impairment. In particular, I
began to question the function and impact of disability metaphors and the role that such
figures of speech play in feminist scholarship. In this article, I consider how disability is
used as metaphor in two feminist texts: bell hooks's The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity
and Love (2004) and Tania Modleski's Feminism without Women: Culture and Criticism in
a "Postfeminist" Age (1991). Beginning with a broad understanding of feminism as a
movement to end sex and gender oppression in the lives of all people, a movement aligned
with anti-racist, anti-homophobic, anti-classist, and (most importantly for this piece) antiableist movements, I make connections between sexist and ableist rhetoric in order to
expose the political and intellectual repercussions of the use of disability as metaphor in

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these feminist texts in particular and in feminist theory more generally. I argue, for instance,
that when feminists use metaphors of disability to represent the negative effects of
patriarchy, they conceptually and theoretically position feminism and disability in opposition
to each other and thereby imply that the goals of feminism are two-fold: to end patriarchy
and to erase disability. I insist, furthermore, that this theoretical and conceptual strategy
runs counter to the goals of contemporary, intersectional feminist politics, activism, and
scholarship.
Insofar as I make these connections, I may seem to enter into a broader discussion about
what is often derisively referred to as "political correctness." Such discussions 1 tend to
devolve into accusations of censorship and battles over what is, or is not, offensive, and
who does, or does not, have the "right" to be offended in the first place. 2 In some
mainstream and feminist philosophical contexts, these discussions have tended to revolve
around the use of ocular metaphors to represent a lack of knowledge and information (as in
"blind review") or to refer to forms of moral negligence (for example, "blindly followed").
Although this article will address negative metaphoric uses of disability, my aim is not to
argue that certain words and phrases are inherently offensive, nor do I assert that
politically-engaged feminist scholars should act as arbiters or censors of each other's
linguistic practices; rather, I aim to show the impact that such language-use has on feminist
scholarship and for feminist politics at the structural, as opposed to the individual, level. In
short, I contend that feminist scholars should recognize that these negative metaphorical
uses of disability variously impact, limit, and contradict the aims of their arguments, in
addition to compromising their professed political goals, regardless of whether or not
everyone in a targeted disabled group is offended by any given disability metaphor. To
advance my argument, I draw on the insights about metaphor that disability scholars such
as Vivian M. May and Beth A. Ferri have made.
In "Fixated on Ability: Questioning Ableist Metaphors in Feminist Theories of Resistance,"
May and Ferri (2005) identify numerous examples of common disability metaphors in
feminist scholarship in which disability is conflated "with stigma or stuckness," rather than
recognized "as a constructed outcome of power" (121). As May and Ferri explain,
feminists, in various eras, have used metaphors of madness, crippling, immobility,
blindness, deafness, and other impairments in a variety of ways for a range of purposes.
Within the varying terms of these disability metaphors (and analogies), feminists have
typically positioned disability either in opposition to knowledge, or as a negative effect of
gender power and privilege. In response to these feminist rhetorical practices, May and
Ferri call on feminists to make nuanced rhetorical and metaphorical use of disability, rather
than to simply police or clean up language by restriction alone: to employ "the both/and
simultaneity, the ironic redeployment, and the playful position via language that not only
allow us to come to terms with ambiguities, but to flourish by engaging with multiple
structures of difference and identity simultaneously" (133).
My aim in this article is not to suggest that language in general and metaphor in particular
have some timeless and universal character, nor is it to adjudicate what should count as

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(in)appropriate linguistic practice. Like May and Ferri, however, I maintain that the use of
disability metaphors promotes an ideology of impairment as a negative form of
embodiment. These metaphors typically position disability as invariably bad, undesirable,
pitiful, painful, and so on. They are, therefore, ableist because they promote discriminatory
attitudes toward people with disabilities. May and Ferri list a number of unconnected and
separate examples of disability metaphor and analogy in feminist work in order to
demonstrate that there is a pattern to the way that feminists have used these rhetorical
devices. I expand upon their groundbreaking feminist disability theory by examining two
examples of the metaphorical use of disability mobilized in a different way than the
metaphors that May and Ferri investigate: namely, hooks's repeated use in her
aforementioned text of the term emotional cripples and the repeated use in Modleski's text
of the concept of the mute body. I examine their repeated use of these metaphors in the
texts by considering the role that the metaphors serve within the overall arguments of the
respective texts; that is, I analyze these topically and temporally distinct texts because of
their systematic (rather than occasional or unsystematic) use of extended disability
metaphors. Thus, although I build upon the insights of May and Ferri's work on discrete
and separate instances of disability as metaphor in feminist theory, I also depart from it. I
show that the extended (ableist) use of disability as metaphor in hooks's and Modeleski's
respective texts limits and even contradicts the feminist arguments that these feminist
authors profess to advance in the texts (and elsewhere).
My argument proceeds as follows: I begin with a general discussion about metaphor,
outlining the theories and terms that I will use for my analysis in the rest of the article,
including feminist rhetorical scholarship, particularly referencing the work of Sarah Mills on
sexism in language. I then draw upon this discussion of cognitive metaphor theory, feminist
rhetoric, and disability rhetoric in order to make claims about the implications and
consequences of the ableist use of disability as metaphor in hooks's and Modleski's
feminist texts. I propose that although figurative language is useful and, perhaps in this
historical moment, even an unavoidable device with which to explain complex and abstract
concepts, feminists should strive to develop ways in which to talk and write about the
damage done by patriarchy that do not simplistically, negatively, and detrimentally
associate and even conflate that "damage" with disability. For although feminism aims to
be a set of theories and practices designed to advance the goal of social justice for all,
ableist language within feminism greatly compromises efforts to achieve this goal. I end the
essay with reflections on what is needed for a feminist philosophy of language that attends
to the limits and possibilities of metaphors of disability. That is, I call upon feminists to
adopt a reflective political commitment in which we more diligently interrogate the
assumptions that underlie our theoretical practices and more closely consider the
implications of the words we use--especially our metaphors--in order to prevent further
marginalization of disempowered social groups within our own work.
Theories of Metaphor: Limits and Possibilities
It's raining cats and dogs. I'm a fish out of water. You're blowing my mind. We've burned
those bridges.

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Metaphors are all around. They are part of everyday speech, ways of relating to the world
outside of us. Murray Knowles and Rosamund Moon (2006) define metaphor as "the use of
language to refer to something other than what it was originally applied to, or what it
'literally' means, in order to suggest some resemblance or make a connection between the
two things" ( 3). Knowles and Moon note that people often use metaphors because there is
no one word that represents what they want to say or describe, but that more often people
use metaphoric language in order to creatively and evocatively convey meaning. As they
explain: "metaphors use concrete images to convey something abstract, helping to
communicate what is hard to explain" ( 4-5). In order to convey meaning, metaphors rely
upon presuppositions or assume a shared understanding and knowledge of the chosen
concrete item through which the abstract concept can be better communicated and
understood. The assumption that we can presume the existence of a shared understanding
and knowledge of bodily (including sensory and cognitive) experiences that will serve as
the concrete concept through which we figuratively communicate abstract ideas (as
metaphors of disability do) is, however, very problematic. By and large, such presumptions
rely upon allegedly universal experiences of the body: everyone sees, speaks, hears, feels,
and moves in the same (nondisabled) ways (see Vidali 2010).
Much contemporary scholarship on metaphor is based upon the work of George Lakoff and
his colleagues, most notably a book that he co-authored with Mark Johnson in 1980:
Metaphors We Live By. In this text, Lakoff and Johnson establish cognitive metaphor
theory which argues that metaphors are not merely creative or literary devices, but rather
are essential speech acts. 3 They contend that the way in which we understand and use
metaphor is informed by our (presumed to be universal) experiences of embodiment as
evidenced by the preponderance of concrete bodily and experience-based conceptual
metaphors. 4 Though I do not accept these philosophical assumptions nor the conclusions
that Lakoff and Johnson derive from them, I use some of their analytical terminology in my
argument below. That is, I use Lakoff and Johnson's term source domain (also referred to
as the vehicle) in order to refer to the main concrete concept--namely, disability--that is
used to explain another, usually abstract, idea. As Elena Semino explains it, typically,
under Lakoff and Johnson's cognitive metaphor theory, source domains are (what they
regard as) "concrete, simple, familiar, physical and well-delineated experiences, such as
motions, bodily phenomena, physical objects and so on" (Semino 2008, 6). Alternatively, I
use their term target domain to refer to the abstract concept (in this case, the bad,
deficient, or painful effect of patriarchy) that is assumed to be represented through the
invocation of the source domain (disability). I should point out that the metaphors I discuss
in this context do not fit within the category of conventional or dead metaphors, which have
become "lexicalized" or officially incorporated into dictionary meanings. Rather, the two
metaphors I examine (hooks's "emotional cripples" and Modleski's "mute body") should be
considered as novel metaphors, to use Semino's term: ones which are "likely to be
conscious and deliberate on the part of its user, and recognized and/or processed as such
by its receivers" (19). In the terms of scholarship on metaphor in language, they could also
be referred to as creative metaphors: "those which a writer/speaker constructs to express a
particular idea or feeling in a particular context, and which a reader/hearer needs to

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deconstruct or 'unpack' in order to understand what is meant. They are typically

newalthough they may be based on pre-existing ideas or images" (Knowles and Moon
2006, 5). Though the terms novel metaphors and creative metaphors signify similar figures
of speech, for the sake of parsimony, in this argument, I refer only to the term creative
metaphors.
I employ the work of Lakoff and Johnson cautiously for several reasons. Like Kim Q. Hall
(2012), I am wary of the ways in which allegedly universal, transhistorical, and transcultural
sensory, physical, and physiological experiences are increasingly used as the sole or even
primary basis with which to explain a phenomenon that is as socially and culturally
determined as is figurative language. This universalizing is essentially what cognitive
metaphor theory does. I maintain, therefore, that cognitive metaphor theory should be
considered a product of the "biological turn in the humanities", which Hall identifies as an
"epistemology of ignorance" that uses the banner of science to speculate on all manner
and aspects of human existence with little to no concrete supporting evidence (40-41, 32).
It seems unlikely that the widespread use of common metaphoric language is primarily
based upon actual, lived experiences of the body when some of our most common source
domains--such as blindness--although a physical, embodied experience for some people,
are not actually experienced, nor even understood, by the population at large. On the
contrary, in this particular case, metaphors of blindness are based upon the presumption of
what the experience of blindness must be like, rather than the lived experience of blindness
itself. Indeed, I contend that dominant cultural ideas about, and (mis)representations of,
blindness are the factors that make blindness a useful source domain, enabling metaphors
of blindness to be generally understood in everyday and academic linguistic practices. In
other words, cognitive metaphor theory does not adequately account for the sociocultural
basis of commonly used metaphors of disability.
In short, an ableist perspective undergirds such philosophical and scientific explanations of
metaphor. As Amy Vidali (2010) shows in "Seeing What We Know: Disability and Theories
of Metaphor," Lakoff and Johnson's claims are ableist insofar as they assume that all
bodies have certain physical/cognitive/sensory experiences and that people generally use
related metaphorical expressions that correspond to these experiences (notably, they
repeatedly refer to the metaphor of "knowing is seeing") (34; emphasis in Vidali). Lakoff
and Johnson (1980) claim to philosophically reject notions of objective or absolute truth in
favor of the multiplicity of human experiences of the body which come to structure "the way
we learn to reason and use metaphor" (ix-x); in their text, however, "able bodies take
precedence" through the assumption that all bodies can see, hear, speak and move in
normative ways (Vidali 2010, 38). Experiences of disabled bodies are refused meaningful
existence and elaboration within cognitive metaphor theory. The theory assumes that there
can be no common cultural metaphors based upon the experiences of tremors, stuttering,
or using a wheelchair because these experiences are regarded as random, accidental, and
idiosyncratic. Within the terms of the theory, nondisabled experiences are considered the
universal grounding of metaphor, despite the fact that not even all people who (for
instance) see, hear, speak, and walk perform and experience these actions in exactly the

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same way, especially given that these actions are in many ways conditioned by factors
such as gender, age, and body size.
As I have indicated, despite the fact that (like Vidali) I regard Lakoff and Johnson's theory
of metaphor as implicitly and explicitly ableist, relying on false assumptions about the
universality of certain embodied experiences, I use their technical terminology. With Ellen
Samuels (2011), I think that disability scholars should not simply discard oppressive
theories, but rather should carefully and critically investigate how such theories can be
used and applied in disability studies scholarship, while simultaneously identifying the limits
of their use and applicability. 5 That is, I use a theoretically-nuanced and politicallyinformed "approach to metaphor that engages the diversity of disability; refrains from
policing metaphor; encourages transgression from the disability community; and invites
creative and historic reinterpretations of metaphor" (Vidali 2010, 34). Such an approach is
important because certain uses of metaphor that have, within a given discourse, become
the dominant ways in which to refer to particular aspects of reality tend to be regarded as
commonsensical, as representing the "natural" view of things, and hence may be extremely
difficult to perceive and challenge (Semino 2008, 33). Challenging the politically-potent
(ableist) rhetorical practices that have, in this way, become a commonplace form of
thinking, speaking, or writing about disability within feminist scholarship is, nevertheless,
precisely the aim of this essay. As Margaret Gibbon (1999) writes, "[m]etaphor is always
significant" because "when we use language, we make choices and choices are not always
innocent, but determined by belief systems which underlie them" ( 3, 24). These belief
systems (or ideologies) provide justification for what people do and how they represent
what they do in language. Hence, it is important to recognize the social dimension of
metaphor and the key role that language plays in realizing these social and political values
(Knowles and Moon 2006, 97). An approach to metaphor that counters dominant
assumptions and misunderstandings about disability, while simultaneously advancing the
social and political values of disability studies and disability rights communities through
new and innovative writing and reading of disability metaphors, must be informed by the
lived experiences of disabled people.
Feminist and Disability Studies Theories of Language
You throw like a girl. Man up. Don't be such a pussy. What a bitch!
In the United States, second-wave feminists worked hard to draw attention to and change
the androcentric and sexist nature of both formal and everyday language. Initially, this
feminist scholarship on language took the form of investigation of language-practices,
attempting to locate and explain differences between the ways that men and women use
language (for example, men's habitual tendency to interrupt and women's habitual
tendency to apologize), or investigation of language-systems, examining the sexist
assumptions embedded in standard English language itself (for example, the use of
gender-specific language such as "man" and "mankind" to represent all people or the
androcentric etymology of words like "seminal") (Gibbon 1999, 2). In Language and
Sexism, Sara Mills (2008) writes that this early feminist rhetorical scholarship worked

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against overt sexism, identifiable through its use of linguistic markers and presuppositions
that have historically been associated with the expression of discriminatory opinions about
women, signaling to readers (and listeners) that women are inferior to men (11). As Mills
explains it, "overt sexism" includes hate speech, insults, alleged gender-neutrality of
masculine pronouns and nouns (i.e., to represent the entire human species), semantic
derogation (use of words associated with women as pejoratives), and reference to women
by first names, nicknames, or a husband's name only (e.g., Mrs. Robert Smith) (38-68).
Second-wave feminist language reform has typically confronted these forms of overt
sexism through the development of alternative terms (such as chair or chairperson, rather
than chairman or chairwoman), by renaming or with neologisms (such as "her-story"), by
using marked words (such as "pig" to refer to particularly sexist or chauvinist men), with
positive inflection of pejorative words (also called reclaiming), and by "talking back" (to
borrow hooks's phrase) with humor and wit (83-91).
By contrast, "indirect sexism" involves the denial of a speaker's responsibility for an
utterance, the mediation of the utterance through irony or the prefacing of sexist
statements with disclaimers or hesitation (Mills 2008, 135). Forms of indirect sexism
include humor, stereotyping presuppositions, conflicting messages, scripts and metaphors,
collocation (words that tend to be placed together and retain each other's connotations),
and the articulation of an androcentric perspective (140-152). As Mills points out, the
occurrence of indirect sexism is more difficult to challenge than overt sexism because
words and phrases cannot be identified as inherently or unequivocally sexist; therefore, "[i]
ndirect sexism can only be countered by making apparent some of the presuppositions
which are implicit or by making explicit the sexism underlying statements" (152, 153).
Indirect sexism, Mills notes, has been the focus for third-wave feminist scholars of
language and rhetoric who are concerned less with issues of inclusive language and
etymology than with the context of use and issues of power within discourse, though clearly
third-wave feminist scholars who produce this latter kind of feminist work on power and
discourse are indebted to the groundwork of second-wave feminist language reform in the
first place (25-26).
I've had the craziest day. The snowstorm completely paralyzed the city. That's such a lame
excuse. What are you blind? What are you deaf? Idiot! Moron! Retard!
Disability too has become part of everyday language, and not positively so. In order to
demonstrate this negative state of affairs, disability activists and rhetoricians have drawn
lessons from feminist philosophy/theory of language scholarship, utilizing some of the
same language-reform techniques in response to overt ableism that feminists have
employed to resist overt sexism, including the introduction of alternative terms and phrases
(such as the replacement of handicap with disability and the use of person-first language
6 ) and the revaluation of pejorative words (for example, the reclaiming of the terms crip
and gimp). Although Mills (2008, 73), for instance, is concerned to make connections
between overt sexism and overt racism, homophobia, and ableism, I am concerned to
show the connections between indirect sexism and indirect ableism in language-use, in

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addition to the overt connections that can made between these axes of power. Indeed, by
interrogating metaphors of disability and their underlying presuppositions about bodies,
disability theorists can challenge indirect ableism in feminist writing just as third-wave
feminists have challenged indirect sexism in mainstream (and alternative) popular culture,
academia, the mainstream media, and public policy.
Disability rhetoricians have brought attention to the fact that "when Americans think, talk,
and write disability, they usually consider it as a tragedy, illness, or defect that an individual
body 'has,' as personal and accidental, before or without sociopolitical significance" (Wilson
and Lewiecki-Wilson 2001, 2). In other words, when disability is used in figurative and
metaphorical ways, it is primarily understood in terms of inability, loss, lack, problems, and
other forms of negation (Titchkosky 2007, 8). Although, unlike gender, disability is not
centrally implicated in the basic grammatical system, the use of disability as a metaphorical
construct is nonetheless prevalent and implicit in our language. Just as a word such as
seminal has lost its original etymological connection (in this case, to male ejaculation) in
our contemporary connotations, so too many words that refer to disability have transitioned
from medical discourse into common speech and slang and have lost their linguistic
connection to the original referent. In this regard, Jay Dolmage (2005, 113) gives as
examples the words crippled, retarded, and handicapped, to which I would add idiot (once
a medical category of cognitive disability), dumb (once used to refer to lack of oral speech
communication, as in the phrase "deaf and dumb"), lame, crazy, and insane. Though most
of these disparaging words are no longer generally recognized as connected to, or
associated with, specific impairments, they have nevertheless retained connotations of
insult, inability, and lack due to more widespread negative conceptions of disability. This,
then, is indirect ableism. Vidali, May and Ferri, and Dolmage are among the disability
studies scholars who have explored disability metaphors, that is, the way that metaphors of
disability are used as a source domain that confers negativity upon things not themselves
directly associated with disability due to the retention of broader negative cultural
connotations of disability itself. As I indicate above, the work of these scholars has tended
to deal primarily with conventional, rather than creative, metaphors by citing a variety of
brief examples, rather than considering the role that these metaphors play within the wider
context of the original text's argument. By analyzing the creative disability metaphors of
"emotional cripples" and "the mute body" in the feminist texts of hooks and Modleski, I
expand on the work of these scholars, modeling a process of transgressive reading that
reveals how extended disability metaphors impact the overall argument of the texts.
Knowles and Moon (2006, 12) note that metaphors allow an open-endedness that is less
precise than literal language, which gives metaphor its creative, emotional, and intellectual
potential. A transgressive reading of disability metaphors mines these creative, emotional,
and intellectual potentialities with a "commitment to retelling the stories of disability in such
a way that resists the illusion that disability is a limit without possibility" (Titchkosky 2007,
131).
Extended Metaphors of Disability: Two Close Readings

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In her fourth book on love, The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity and Love, bell hooks
(2004) attempts to reveal the consequences of patriarchy on men's ability to love. In her
first book on love, upon which The Will to Change draws and builds, hooks defines love not
as simply an affective emotion, but rather as "the will to extend one's self for the purpose of
nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth Love is as love does. Love is an act of
will--namely both an intention and an action" (hooks 2000, 4). In her definition of love,
hooks rejects patriarchal notions of love that have associated it with pure affect, femininity,
and even weakness, arguing that love in its true form is not something we unconsciously
fall into, but rather is something intentionally enacted. hooks theorizes that patriarchy
wounds men in a way that prevents them from choosing or enacting love, as she defines it,
relegating them to a state of "emotional deadness" (134). Throughout the fourth book on
love, disability (the source domain), variously alluded to and referenced as (for instance)
"crippling" or "wounding," communicates the detrimental effects of patriarchy on men's
emotional capacities (the target domain). To take one example, hooks writes that
patriarchy "is the single most life-threatening social dis-ease assaulting the male body and
spirit in our nation," it "demands of men that they become and remain emotional
cripples" (2004, 17, 27). To take another example from the earlier book, she asserts that
"patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that
they kill off the emotional parts of themselves. If an individual is not successful in
emotionally crippling himself, he can count on patriarchal men to enact rituals of power that
will assault his self-esteem" (hooks 2000, 66). These are "creative" disability metaphors,
that is, they have been newly created by hooks.
As I show below, this type of metaphor cannot be redeemed or re-read without the loss of
the content on which it primarily relies, namely, the equation disability = bad. I maintain that
insofar as hooks uses disability in this manner, she ostracizes her disabled and disabilityallied readers and also contradicts her earlier calls for an inclusive, intersectional feminism
that eradicates "the ideology of domination that permeates Western culture" (hooks 1984,
24). As I have pointed out, metaphoric uses of disability that primarily understand
impairment as negative are oppressive and contribute to the continued domination and
marginalization of people with disabilities. Although the word cripple (often shortened to
crip 7 ) has been reclaimed within disability rights communities, hooks does not redeploy
this term in order to empower people with disabilities. On the contrary, she implies that
cripples are broken, wounded, (self)mutilated, unhealthy, and near death, as well as that all
of these meanings are interchangeable. Nor does hooks subtly or contextually employ
these words for the denotative differences and nuances between them, but rather solely for
their negative connotations. That is, she does not take care to note that words such as
wounded and unhealthy imply a potentially temporary state, whereas words such as
mutilated and broken imply permanency. Furthermore, terms such as broken and wounded
imply the actions of an(other) agent who does the breaking or wounding, that is, an agent
who is not necessarily identical with the individual broken or wounded. By contrast, the
term self-mutilation clearly implicates males themselves as the cause of their current state
and the term unhealthy suggests that the cause of male inadequacy in this regard may be
due to either personal (internal) flaws or external causes. That hooks uses these words

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haphazardly and interchangeably results in a lack of clarity about who, or what, is

"crippling" men emotionally. Is it self-mutilation or patriarchal wounding? Is this a
permanent state or remediable? The ambiguity between internal/external,
transience/permanence in hooks's text throws into relief the sociocultural injunction to heal,
to overcome disability, and to become as able-bodied as possible--a familiar trope in
representations of disability (see, for instance, Titchkosky 2007, 175).
Interestingly, in hooks's metaphors, it is not medical institutions and professionals who will
provide such healing; rather, feminism is posited as the great savior and healer, the cure
for the emotional wounds inflicted by patriarchy. She writes: "A feminist future for men can
enable transformation and healing" (hooks 2004, 142). This feminist future, however, is
neither straightforward, nor automatic. There is clear moralizing around the choice
presumed to be involved in healing, as evidenced through the title: The Will to Change. It
seems that feminism must be appropriately chosen and used by both men and women in
order for men's healing to occur. hooks writes, "we cannot heal what we cannot feel, by
supporting patriarchal culture that socializes men to deny feelings, we doom them to live in
states of emotional numbness;" but, ultimately, she concludes that "men must set the
example by daring to heal, daring to do the work of relational recovery" ( 6, 175). Taking
the metaphor on its own premises, then, one could conclude both that disability is a
negative, anti-relational state of injury and brokenness that ought to be healed by the
appropriate social institutions and that, in stark contradiction, disability is a wounded state
that must be resisted by individuals themselves through sheer will. In hooks's text, the
thirteen uses of the word heal and the additional thirteen references to "men's emotional
health" and "being healthy" underscore this ultimate push to heal at all costs. 8
Another reading of hooks's metaphor is possible. That is, one can interpret the metaphor of
"emotional cripples" more creatively by resisting the stereotypically negative connotations
to which hooks steers her readers. If we do not assume that to be "crippled" means to be
broken, numb, and unable to act, but rather that mobility impairment offers different ways in
which to move in the world, then we can interpret hooks's metaphor as incorporating
another contradiction into her argument. If patriarchy "wounds" or "cripples" men
emotionally, perhaps it is the "emotionally-able" who need to adapt their conception of valid
emotional "movement." Perhaps men are indeed feeling and enacting love in ways that we,
as a culture, do not recognize and that, therefore, feminism needs to create access to love
by changing the social and material environment, creating ramps to assist men in knowing
and enacting love. By understanding that mobility impairment is not a monolithic or singular
experience, one can read new possibilities into hooks's text, but such an understanding of
disability presents problems for this particular feminist argument. From a disability studies
perspective, it is not the duty or responsibility of people with disabilities to change, but
rather the responsibility of nondisabled and disabled people alike to adapt the physical and
social environment in ways that encompass the needs of disabled people. Disability studies
perspectives are concerned with how environments, practices, discourses, and social
contexts can be adapted to include a variety of bodies and minds; they are not, primarily,
concerned with the "source," 9 origin, or etiology of disability or impairment. This

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redirection of responsibility compromises hooks's argument that patriarchy has negative

consequences for men (which it does), to which problem feminism is the solution (which it
can be), because the source of the problem--namely, patriarchy--would no longer be of
central concern. The metaphor of "emotional cripples" ceases to be effective when
approached from a disability studies perspective because this new understanding of the
metaphor shifts the focus away from "curing" disabled people (in this context, men
impacted by patriarchy) and hence, away from resisting and changing patriarchy and
toward adjustment, acceptance of, and adaptation to, its consequences. Clearly, this shift
in meaning is not what a feminist text would be designed to argue. Thus, in order to agree
with hooks, one must either comply with the notion that disability is synonymous with
brokenness or resist that connotation, as I have now done, and consequently shift the
focus away from patriarchy as a damaging system of oppression. These alternatives
present a no-win situation in which both readings of the disability metaphor are
unsatisfying, that is, one is unsatisfying from a disability studies perspective and the other
is unsatisfying from a feminist perspective. hooks's metaphor can be satisfactorily
sustained to support her argument only if it is construed in ways that are ableist. That is, in
order to make sense, hooks's current use of the metaphor depends upon the construal of
disability as an irredeemably negative state of being. Feminist scholars must find a way to
discuss the harmful effects of patriarchy on both men and women without simplistically
equating such effects to impairment.
The conceptualization of feminism as healer also occurs in Modleski's Feminism Without
Women (1991). The third chapter of the book is entitled "Some Functions of Feminist
Criticism; Or the Scandal of the Mute Body," a title that plays on Shoshana Felman's The
Scandal of the Speaking Body (2003), with which Modleski disagrees and which she aims
to critique (Modleski 1991, 48-49). As Modeleski explains it, the chapter centers on the
question of what "feminists hope to accomplish by examining popular texts--or, for that
matter, any texts at all" (36). In the chapter, Modleski critiques what she refers to as the
"political paralysis" (an ableist metaphor) of ethnographic cultural critics and their tendency
not to heed their female interlocutors, erasing women from the published work (36, 41).
She uses the creative metaphor of the "mute body" (in contrast to Felman's "speaking
body") in order to explain the marginalized position that women often occupy in cultural
criticism. Although the word mute actually appears only three times in the chapter, the
metaphor itself is nonetheless ever-present, not only in the way that Modleski repeatedly
invokes the terms silence and silencing, but also in the "meta-text" of the chapter, since a
portion of the title--"The Scandal of the Mute Body"--appears as a header on every oddnumbered page throughout the chapter. Indeed, the use of silence as a metaphor for
marginalization and oppression is widespread in feminism and other identity-based political
movements, such as in ACT UP's "Silence = Death" slogan. Thus, we ought to consider
how silence is deployed as a metaphor, despite the fact that silence itself it not a disability.
In the case of Modleski's text, the particular way in which both silence and muteness are
used helps reveal the potentially ableist assumption undergirding of what is or is not
considered politically possible without oral speech. This extended disability metaphor relies
on negative connotations of impairment in which a "mute body" is associated with

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restriction, inability, and total, non-communicative silence. In the terms of this metaphor,
"muteness" or speech impairment is the source domain, while patriarchy's exclusion and
erasure of women's "voices" (a metonym for women's thoughts, opinions, writing, speech
and so on) is the target domain. In other words, muteness (the embodied experience of
nonverbal people) is inherently and oppressively undesirable and oral, hearing, and literate
female feminists are called upon to resist it by speaking and writing publicly in the name of
all women. Since mute is only occasionally used in Modleski's text and silence is so often
used, it seems that, as in hooks, there is a slippage of meaning. That is, Modleski presents
muteness and silence as interchangeable, disregarding the denotative and connotative
differences between these terms. Like hooks's interchangeable uses of wounded,
mutilated, and crippled, Modleski's metaphorical use of mute and silence 10 is simplistic,
alluding to a monolithic experience of speech and hearing impairments that covers over the
radical diversity amongst Deaf, deafened, hard-of-hearing, and other disabled people.
In short, Modleski, like hooks, offers feminism as the potential savior of women from their
supposed "muteness." She asks: "Is the female feminist critic able to give an authentic
voice to the women traditionally silenced by patriarchal culture and sometimes even by that
culture's sternest dissidents?" (Modleski 1991, 41). Modleski concludes that feminist
criticism should perform a dialogue that values and promotes the voices of women,
asserting that "feminist critical writing is committed writing, a writing committed to the future
of women" (47). Notice that feminism is again positioned as that which will prevent or heal
metaphoric impairment. In Modleski's argument, the positioning of women outside of
discourse and the refusal to authorize them to speak publicly performs patriarchal
rhetorical violence, which is "the real, historical scandal to which feminism" should address
itself (51, 52). Modleski offers Virginia Woolf's fictionalized representation of Judith
Shakespeare 11 as an example of feminist writing that enacts resistance to patriarchal
violence by giving "a name, a desire, and a history to one of the mute females who lived
and died in obscurity" (53). As Modleski boldly states: "[I]t could be said that every time a
feminist critic speaks and writes as a woman in a world that has always conspired to
silence and negate women she brings into being a new order and enacts the scandal of the
speaking body in a more profound way than those people already authorized to speak by
virtue of their gender" (ibid.; emphasis in Modleski). Female feminist critics who become
speaking bodies, she explains, perform a seizure of power and resist the current state of
affairs in which "mute women remain mostly mute" and cannot "speak freely to and of one
another" (54, 58).
Even if we take Modleski's metaphor on its own terms, the choice of the term mute is a
strange one, for it erases patriarchy as a system of exercised power insofar as "mute"
implies a permanent state of being in which one cannot speak, not merely a state in which
communication is controlled or restricted by another. To read Modleski's metaphor against
the ideological grain, one simply needs to shift the focus from public speech and writing
specifically to communication more broadly. Just as hooks's metaphor potentially devalues
or overlooks men's possible alternative forms of enacting love, so too Modleski's concept of
the "mute body," in combination with her insistence that feminist critics should speak and

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write publicly in order to resist patriarchal restrictions, ignores other, non-standard,

marginalized forms of communication. As a feminist and disability studies scholar, I must
(rhetorically) ask: Are public speech and published writing the only ways in which to
communicate freely and with power? I contend in fact that non-verbal forms of
communication--such as sign language or note-writing--are far from powerless and that
other forms of communication--via a computer, voice synthesizer, or interpreter--also have
the potential to seize power for the female communicator. A disability studies approach to
Modleski's argument would value the content of the communication, rather than the form in
which it is conveyed.
In addition, Modleski's insistence upon the public nature of communication occludes the
possibility that private, interpersonal communication can be a mode of finding freedom and
effecting change. If we accept the metaphor's presuppositions, we miss other forms of free
and powerful communicative acts that do not appear in the expected public and
performative state. In fact, the metaphor and its presuppositions seem to contradict
feminist arguments about the political nature of the private realm by defining effective
feminist critical expression as exclusively public speech and writing. That is, given the way
that the public realm has historically been associated with men, while the private realm has
been associated with women, it seems counterproductive for a feminist to validate public
speech acts only. I contend that by taking a disability studies-informed approach to these
states of affairs, we can identify and redeem various modes of public and private
communication--as well as silence and non-communication--as different acts of freedom,
as self-care, and as ways to subvert or seize power. Modleski's "mute body" does not allow
room for these possibilities and thus limits her conclusions. In short, while the metaphor of
"mute" may have a type of impact or force as figurative language, it is clear that it carries
problematic implications when read from a disability studies perspective.
When we examine extended disability metaphors closely, we should ask: What is gained
and what is lost when feminists use this metaphor? In other words, we should ask: How
does the use of the metaphors of "emotional cripples" (hooks) and "the mute
body" (Modleski) benefit feminist movements and how does such use of metaphor
undermine these movements? In both of these uses of metaphor, the "gain," which seems
to be their rhetorical affront and memorability, is achieved through the deprecation of
various groups of people with disabilities. In the case of hooks, the "loss" is an inclusive
feminist argument and potential coalition with people with disabilities, particularly disabled
feminists. In the case of Modleski, what is "lost" is recognition and valuation of non-public
modes of communication as effective and empowering. When choosing metaphors,
especially extended metaphors upon which our arguments rely, feminist scholars must
decide if what is gained rhetorically and linguistically through the metaphor is worth what
may be ultimately lost argumentatively and politically.
Toward a Feminist Philosophy of Language
Can feminists think, talk, and write about the damage done by patriarchy without relying on
stereotypical and ableist notions of disability? Doing so is not simply a matter of propriety

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or personal discretion. On the contrary, ableist metaphors of disability limit the scope of,
and contradict the goals of, the feminist arguments in which they are used because these
metaphors are neither innocent nor value neutral, but rather are simplistic, homogenizing,
and implicitly political in character. Just as feminist scholarship has eschewed universal
notions of "woman" and challenged masculinist metaphors of the female body, 12 it must
now address its use of figurative language about disability. As I have suggested, when
feminists negatively employ disability as metaphor, they institute an opposition between
feminism and people with disabilities. As May and Ferri (2005) put it, "by conflating
disability with stigma or stuckness many feminists also construe disability in opposition to
the feminist subject" (121). This use, in feminist texts, of disability to represent stigma--or,
in the case of the two metaphors analyzed above, restriction, or woundedness--could
alienate disabled readers from these texts and, therefore, prevent effective cross-group
and ally actions. Though the use of disability metaphors is clearly not exclusive to
feminists, such use is nonetheless problematically habitual and historically consistent in
feminist contexts. Sharon Lamp (2006, 2) writes:
Reacting to characterizations of being weak or inferior as slander, feminists deflected such
portrayals by distancing themselves from these categories, and denying association of
feminine gender with disability. Using an ableist line of thinking still in place today,
nineteenth-century women agreed that there was a category of hopelessly, inherently
dependent defectives that should be subjected to social control, but they argued against
women being included in this defective class simply by virtue of their sex. The move by
feminists to separate themselves from the devalued group of defectives without challenging
the hierarchical value-system that produced it served to make disability central to feminism
as a negative marker. (emphasis in Lamp)
Notable historical examples of this feminist "distancing" from disability include Charlotte
Perkins-Gilman and Margaret Sanger, both of whom used disability rhetoric and metaphor
in the context of the widely-popular late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century eugenics
movement as a way to promote women's rights (Lamp 2006, 14; Lamp and Cleigh 2011,
176-182; Seitler 2003). Both women, that is, used "positive" eugenic rhetoric and rhetoric
about women's roles as breeders in order to encourage better education and treatment of
white, middle-class, able-bodied women who would give birth to the next generation of
eugenically-sound, rather than "weak" or "feeble-minded," children. This sort of ableist
rhetoric within feminist political organizations and movements has historically distanced
(nondisabled) feminists from disability, making alliances between disabled feminists and
nondisabled feminists hard to establish. Though this history does not explain away or
excuse the use of ableist disability metaphors today, it provides a context within which to
situate the habitual positioning of feminist women against disability and the
conceptualization of patriarchal power as disabling. The issue at hand now is how to resist
this historical usage without losing the important purpose of previous feminist work.
What does the lesson of this discussion mean for feminists in the present (and future) who
want to align themselves with disability rights scholars and activists and resist the use of

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negative and monolithic representations of disability? Does my argument in this article

entail that one should never use disability metaphorically? Not exactly. Rather, the problem
is the use of disability as a negative source domain to represent inability, loss, and lack in a
simplistic and uncritical way. As I have shown, this use of disability as metaphor creates
problems for understanding lived embodiment and ultimately limits or contradicts the
feminist arguments that are proffered. Despite the problems in most past and current uses
of disability metaphors, I nonetheless encourage creativity, nuance, and experimentation in
feminist writing because innovative, politically-accountable uses of metaphor could make
people think more deeply and alternatively about embodiment than conventional
metaphors currently allow. For example, Vidali (2010) suggests that we alter the sensory
experiences that have traditionally been used in a metaphor by (for instance) asking
"students to find the 'scents' of previous course" concepts rather than asking if they can
"see" connections (49). She writes that this sort of "creative engagement with disability
metaphors can further complicate, or 'denaturalize,' ideas of how bodies and metaphors
interact" (ibid.). Furthermore, Moya Bailey (2011, 142), in "'The Illest': Disability as
Metaphor in Hip Hop Music," writes that in "the liminal spaces of hip hop, the
reappropriation of ableist language can mark a new way of using words that departs from
generally accepted disparaging connotations." It is indeed possible and even desirable to
use disability metaphorically in ways that are empowering and that acknowledge the
complexity of disabled minds and bodies. To do so, feminist scholars could take cues from
disabled creative writers such as Eli Clare (2007) who describes tremors as a bodily
experience that prevents playing the piano, provokes stares and taunts, and also causes a
lover to rise up in pleasure and beg for more (34, 79, 82). How, we might ask, would a
creative metaphor of tremors attend to the multiplicity of that experience?
Attempts to use metaphor creatively do not release anyone from responsibility. The
growing corpus of work on disability and rhetoric will clearly be useful to feminists
(nondisabled and disabled alike) who aim to use metaphor more responsibly in their work.
As Titchkosky points out, however, "Texts never just get it right or get it wrong insofar as
they are also a 'doing'--right or wrong, texts are always oriented social action, producing
meaning" that involves both the writer and the reader (Titchkosky 2007, 21; emphasis in
Titchkosky). We can never fully predict the way in which our metaphors will be read or
used once our words are out in the world. Although I never contacted hooks to ask about
her use of "emotional cripples" (as so many folks at the conference wanted me to do), nor
did I point out to the pilot that he had misunderstood the woman's use of "Deaf," my
experience of these two events and my further research into the topic of disability as
metaphor have made clear to me that better incorporation of disability issues into feminist
work is not simply a matter of using more inclusive, politically-correct language; rather, we
must be willing to engage in difficult dialogues, to acknowledge the open-endedness of our
inherently metaphoric language and communicate with one another across differences--in
whatever ways and with whatever modes we use to do so.
I contend, therefore, that a feminist philosophy of language--that is, language conveyed in
any format or mode of communication, not just scholarly writing alone--ought to incorporate

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insights from disability studies and be premised on the following general concepts. Note
that this feminist philosophy of language is a process, not a product, "an art, not a
science" (Hall 2012, 31). First, do no harm. Do not use language that aligns negative
concepts or connotations with another marginalized group, even if that language is what
seems most powerful, evocative, and effective. Many of us have taught our students and
our peers to consider the meanings that are embedded in phrases such as "throwing like a
girl" and "acting like a pussy." We have likely shunned the use of the term gay to refer to
something as silly and discouraged use of the term retard in order to insult; yet, some of us
cling to the terms blind, deaf, dumb in order to insult, invalidate, and demean. Therefore,
second: be responsible. Language is never neutral. We make choices about the words we
use and we have a responsibility to understand both the denotation and connotation of the
words we choose. We must interrogate metaphors and other forms of speech in the same
rigorous way and to the same extent that we would investigate and understand any theory
or concept before we use it in our work. Metaphors have political content and effect; they
are not merely the creative, stylistic delivery of the "real" meaning of a given phrase or
argument. On the contrary, the content and style of delivery of these rhetorical practices
are inseparable: they inform and inflect one another. Third, and finally: be accountable and
open to criticism. Despite our best feminist intentions, we cannot always get it right.
Nevertheless, we must be willing to let go of words or concepts that do damage to others
and develop new words, new metaphors, and new ideas that better serve and further our
feminist goals. This feminist philosophy of language allows for us to enact an affective
politics that embraces the linguistic utility of metaphor, yet remains intellectually rigorous
and committed to the social justice mission of the feminist movement.
Notes
1. Examples of such conversations can be found in the archives of the New APPS: Arts,
Politics, Philosophy, Science blog, Bitch Magazine online, and elsewhere (Tremain 2011a,
2011b; abbyjean 2009). Return to Text
2. For example, several comments on one of Shelley Tremain's posts on the New APPS
blog cast doubt upon, that is, are skeptical about, the claim that blind people are actually
offended by the term "blind review" (Tremain 2011a). Return to Text
3. The concept of speech acts come from J.L. Austin's "How to do Things with
Words" (Austin 1975). Return to Text
4. Examples of these overarching conceptual metaphors include "ARGUMENT IS WAR",
"GOOD IS UP/BAD IS DOWN", and "THE MIND IS A MACHINE" (Lakoff and Johnson
1980, 4, 16, 27). Return to Text
5. Discussing the work of Judith Butler, Samuels argues that disability scholars cannot
simply substitute the word "disability" for, sex, gender, or sexuality. She encourages
scholars to take a critical stance in how they take up Butler's theories that do not
acknowledge the disabled body (Samuels 2012). Return to Text

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6. The use of person-first language--"a boy with autism" or "people with disabilities" rather
than "an autistic boy" or a "disabled person"-- is contentious, particularly among disability
scholars and community advocates. For discussion of person-first language, see Chapter 6
of Reading and Writing Disability Differently (Titchkosky 2007, 177-208). Return to Text
7. Carrie Sandahl (2003) notes the similarity between the reclamations of queer and
crip/cripple. Of the verb form of these terms, she writes: "Queering and cripping are both
theatrical and everyday practices deployed to challenge oppressive norms, build
community, and maintain the practitioners' self-worth" (38). Return to Text
8. The uses of "heal" appear on pages xvi, 2, 6, 65, 69, 143, 149, 153, 172, 175, 184, 186,
and 187. The references to men's emotional health appear on pages 43, 45, 48, 49, 65, 86,
114, 132, 138, 146, 156, 164, and 179. Return to Text
9. Nirmala Erevelles (2011) has argued that disability studies scholars must not ignore the
sources of disablement when so many people are disabled due to their race, class, and
geographic location via war, malnutrition, and lack of healthcare. She cautions against
simplistically celebratory narratives of disability and urges a more contextualized approach
which is attentive to class, race, gender, sexuality, and geography (132-139). Return to
Text

10. The anthology Silence, Feminism, Power (Maholtra and Camillo Rowe, 2013,
forthcoming) interrogates the assumption that silence is inherently oppressive. Return to
Text
11. This representation of Judith Shakespeare appears in Woolf's text on women and
writing: A Room of One's Own (Woolf 1989). Return to Text
12. For more on masculinist metaphors, see the articles in Hendricks's and Oliver's
(1999) Language and Liberation: Feminism, Philosophy and Language, Part Three "The
Power of Masculinist Metaphors: Words That Keep Women in Place" (243-322). Return
to Text
References
abbyjean. 2009. The Transcontinental Disability Choir: What is Ableist Language and Why
Should You Care? In Bitch Media. Bitch Magazine.
Austin, J. L. 1975. How To Do Things With Words. Second edition. The William James
Lectures. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Bailey, Moya. 2011. "'The Illest': Disability as Metaphor in Hip Hop Music." In Blackness
and Disability, edited by Chris Bell, 141-148. East Lansing: Michigan State University
Press.
Clare, Eli. 2007. The Marrow's Telling : Words In Motion. Ypsilanti: Homofactus Press.

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Dolmage, Jay. 2005. "Between The Valley and the Field." Prose Studies 27 (1/2):108-119.
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~~~~~~~~

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By Sami Schalk, Department

sschalk@indiana.edu

of

Gender

Studies,

Indiana

Page 21 of 21

University,

E-mail:

Sami Schalk is a doctoral candidate at Indiana University in Gender Studies. Her research
focuses on the representation of disability in black women's fiction. Her academic work has
been published in the Disability Studies Quarterly and the Journal of Comparative
Research in Anthropology and Sociology. Sami received her MFA in Creative Writing at the
University of Notre Dame. She is currently the program coordinator for Young Women
Writing for (a) Change of Bloomington and a board member for the Society for Disability
Studies.

Source: Disability Studies Quarterly, Fall2013, Vol. 33 Issue 4, p7, 1p

Item: 91561522

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