A Balancing Act: How Women with a Hidden Disability Perform Femininity — Page 5:
21 The light of the moon reflected off her now empty mug. She gazed out over the vast emptiness. Alone, she thought. I’m alone in this one.
Analysis of Narratives Feminized Disability Identity
22 The body is a symbolic and cultural bearer of value (Edwards and Imrie). It is a tool that communicates the junction of both gender and ability. Persons with a hidden disability differ from nondisabled persons because they are often intimately aware of their bodily performance (Corbin). Similarly, ‘doing gender’ is an unconscious process for most (Butler, Gender Trouble; “Gender as Performance”; Brickell). In the United States, as well as many other parts of the world, gender norms and expectations exist in all social situations, dictating how men and women are supposed to look, behave, and what they are supposed to be able to do: how they are supposed to perform (Butler, Gender Trouble; Wilson). The expectations for a gendered performance becomes ingrained in us from the moment we are wrapped in a pink or a blue blanket and cooed at that we are ‘pretty’ or ‘handsome.’ A masculine person should embody strength, rationality, self-reliance, determination, and perseverance (Robertson; Shuttleworth). Women, on the other hand, are expected to embody beauty, nurturance, dependence, compassion, and vulnerability.
Self-Concept and Disability
23 Goffman coined the term dramaturgy to describe the performance that two people engage in when interacting with each other. It is during this dramaturgical performance that an ‘actor’ manages the impression of the ‘audience’ (real or imaginary) by asserting and emphasizing certain qualities and downplaying or hiding others, both verbally and nonverbally (Riessman). Humans seek to perform in ways that will promote a favorable impression of themselves (Brickell). The self-concept is consequently affected by what we do in our performance (Herek).
24 The self-concept is a person’s self-perceptions formed through experience with and interpretations of one’s environment (Bracken). The development of a self-concept is a continuous process, constantly changing to integrate experiences and feelings (Charmaz and Paterniti). A self-concept is negatively affected by shame (Matthews). Shame is a painful emotion involving the negative evaluation of the global self resulting from the perception that one’s self or one’s presentation to others has not met with one’s personal expectations. At the core of shame there is the belief that oneself is bad, deficient, defective, inadequate, and unworthy (S. Taylor; Dickerson), which occurs in response to a discrepancy between one’s actual self and one’s ideal self, or when one fears being negatively evaluated by others (Bracken).
25 One is most vulnerable to shame when s/he is exposed as inadequate or defective, when feeling rejected or weak, when his/her situation is out of control, or when an uncontrollable and/or undesirable characteristic is made salient, for example, when a symptom of a hidden disability occurs publicly (Matthews; Dickerson). When this happens, the individual might respond with an overpowering desire escape the social situation or to hide to conceal the ‘defective’ self from social scrutiny (Dickerson).