Disabled women, Deaf women and neurodivergent women are never mentioned in the ‘Cyborg Manifesto’, which is strange, because the manifesto is full of appellations that have been, historically, applied to us (such as ‘monster’ and ‘creature’).2 Haraway does gesture briefly toward the 1969 novel The Ship Who Sang by Anne McCaffery. The premise of the novel is that parents of children with disabilities may choose to stunt their growth, contain them in a titanium shell, and plug their brains into circuitry. In 2004, the parents of a six-year-old white disabled girl, named Ashley X, ordered her hysterectomy, the removal of her breast buds and an appendectomy. This would make it easier for her parents to care for her, relieve her of menstrual cramps, prevent pregnancy and remove the threat of sexual abuse by caregivers. Her parents consider the treatment a success. First we read about this in a sci-fi novel, then in a feminist manifesto, and finally in the medical journals.
Common Cyborg | Jillian Weise | Granta
