Convenient Discrimination : Crips, Queers, and Other Misfits

Combines media studies and archival research to critically examine historic and contemporary media representations of queerness and disability, ultimately proposing a theory of discriminatory convenience.

While social oppression is typically framed in terms of prejudice and hate, D. Travers Scott contends that discrimination against marginalized groups is often rooted in a shockingly banal perspective: they simply get in the way. Focusing primarily on disabled persons and queer persons in addition to other marginalized demographics including non-Christians and the aged, this book draws on histories and discourses of industrialization, technology, and modernist ideals of efficiency to propose a theory of discriminatory convenience. Convenient Discrimination places representations of queerness and disability in media texts ranging from Appalachian folk songs to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) within the context of both historic and contemporary discussions surrounding health, media, technology, and social movements to form a variety of compelling case studies. These analyses are further bolstered by Scott’s own autoethnographic accounts as a queer, formerly disabled activist-scholar. This book skillfully combines media studies and archival research to articulate a nuanced cultural politics of convenient discrimination, ultimately demonstrating the utility of inconvenience as an analytic.