ABSTRACT
This chapter explores what tutors and students engaged with Cultural Disability Studies in Education (CDSE) are likely to discuss about how representations of disability and gender work with and against each other. A good point for CDSE discourse is that because Marilyn Monroe's real name was Norma Jean Baker, she is invoked in the story that nonetheless employs typically masculine characteristics that disrupt further evocations of the feminine icon. Identity politics is something on which new students are surprisingly taciturn, many if not most, being rather reluctant to refer to themselves as feminists until weeks or even months into a course. CDSE discourse is invited by how the character-defining introduction of Leroy juxtaposes with that of Norma Jean. The residual existence has an anti-cripistemic aspect, whereby knowledge based on disability is discarded, as beyond the normative divide Leroy's emasculation worsens and is worsened by the reduced value of aspirations invested in the idea of building a log house.
