Smith, Bonnie G. and Beth Hutchison, (Editors). Gendering Disability. New Brunswick, New Jersey, and London: Rutgers University Press, 2004. 314 pages, $24.95, Paperback, 0-81353-373-2

Reviewed by Anna Mollow, University of California, Berkeley

Gendering Disability, edited by Bonnie G. Smith and Beth Hutchison, brings together 17 essays originally presented at a 2001 conference on "Gender and Disability Studies," organized by the Institute for Research on Women at Rutgers University. In keeping with disability studies' commitment to interdisciplinarity, the essays incorporate a broad range of academic, artistic, and activist perspectives. Yet despite this disciplinary diversity, the essays have in common a number of central themes. The most important of these is the necessity of analyzing gender and disability in tandem. For example, Alison Kafer's thoughtful examination of "contradictory, fluid" gender roles in the amputee-devotee community shows that disability and gender are, as she puts it, "inseparable" (p. 114). Similarly, Lisa Schur carefully analyzes statistical surveys about employment, education, and quality of life in the U.S., demonstrating that the effects of oppression based on gender and disability are not simply "additive" (p. 253).

The writers included in this volume also explicate myriad ways in which the insights of disability scholars complicate many of feminism's foundational claims. For example, Kristin Lindgren's reading of contemporary illness narratives problematizes feminist celebrations of "the body" as an unproblematic source of female empowerment. And in her thorough and innovative articulation of a "feminist disability theory," Rosemarie Garland-Thomson contrasts a "feminist ethic of care" with disability studies' attention to the "power relations between the givers and receivers of care" (p. 74, 88). Moreover, as several writers in this collection observe, feminists have tended to lament the reduction of women to their sexual and maternal roles without attending to disabled women's historic exclusion from these spheres.

Overall, the essays in Gendering Disability are more deeply engaged in applying the insights of disability studies to feminism than in bringing a feminist critique to bear upon disability studies. Corbett Joan O'Toole critiques the still-prevalent "myth of the white, straight man in a wheelchair" as the paradigmatic disabled person (p. 295). But none of the authors in this volume suggests that key concepts of disability studies require revision through feminist critique. On the contrary, many authors in this volume suggest that disability studies has a critique of hegemonic masculinity built into it. For example, Russell P. Shuttleworth's in-depth interviews with men with cerebral palsy lead him to conclude that disabled men are most likely to be successful in finding sexual intimacy if they are able to develop "alternative ideals" of masculinity (p. 174). Sumi Colligan takes this argument a step further: in her discussion of the medicalization of intersex people, she persuasively argues that disability studies should critique not only gender binaries, but also dichotomous constructions of biological sex.

Indeed, the efforts of Colligan and other writers to make connections between the oppression of disabled people and that of other groups is one of the most promising aspects of Gendering Disability. For example, queer theory and disability studies intersect in productive and illuminating ways in both Sarah E. Chinn's reading of Audre Lorde's writing and Ann M. Fox's discussion of Tennessee Williams's plays. And Adrienne Asch applies the insights of critical race theory to disability studies in order to formulate a cogent argument in support of a "universalizing" or "integrationist" model of race and bodily difference, even as she acknowledges the benefits of minoritizing paradigms (p. 13, 23).

Such connections between disability studies and feminism, queer theory, and critical race theory are crucial. As disability studies continues to establish itself as a new interdisciplinary field, it must not only define its relationship to other minority movements, but also interrogate its relationship to identity politics more broadly. The writers in Gendering Disability take on these projects in thoughtful, nuanced arguments, which will make it impossible for disability studies to plausibly be dismissed as just "another identity politics movement." The essays included in this collection make it clear that critical analysis of disability does not involve simply adding bodily difference to a list of minority identities competing for academic and political attention. Rather, disability studies at its best both complicates and complements some of the most influential arguments that have been generated by feminism, queer theory, and critical race theory. For this reason, Smith and Hutchison's anthology will likely be of great interest to scholars working in any of these fields. And as its essays are short and accessible, combining critical rigor with lively, engaging prose, Gendering Disability also lends itself well to inclusion in undergraduate or graduate courses.