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Description:

The Seated Woman of Çatalhöyük is an 8,000-year-old Neolithic figurine depicting a seated nude female. Her full-bodied form dares to challenge modern notions of beauty and invites us to reconsider historical perspectives on bodily diversity and sexuality in relation to contemporary discussions of disability and sexual expression.

Significance:

I chose this artifact because it challenges our assumptions about the disability and sexuality of ancient cultures. The non-idealized figure invites us to ask how past societies conceptualized the intersection of body difference and sexual identity. This is a representation that invites us to rethink some of our often narrow and ableist conceptions of sexual desirability and validness. By projecting a body-type diverging from the ideals of today's world in a context that is revering, it challenges us to question our prejudices concerning which bodies are considered sexually relevant or powerful. By receiving such an artefact, the reminder on the tangible plane that diverse bodily representations and their sexual connotations have a long and complex history starts to be worth exploring.

Positionality:

I am interested in Disability and Sex because this intersection challenges societal norms and exposes deeply ingrained biases about bodily autonomy and sexual expression. Because I'm committed to disability rights and inclusive sexuality, I think this topic is so crucial for breaking open our ideas about human experiences. Another reason this artifact speaks to me, perhaps, is that I think generally far-ancient cultures held more nuanced views about bodily diversity and sexuality than we often give them credit for. It is a call that I do an investigation on the way modern society has built restrictive narratives about disability and sexual desirability and urges me to find ways in which we can dismantle these barriers as a way of coming up with an inclusive notion of sexuality.

Impact:

The gem I'm taking away is the realization of how artifacts can powerfully illustrate the long history of varied body representations and their sexual implications. This figurine challenges us to realize that the desexualizing of the disabled body is very likely to be a modern construct and not a historical constant. It has deepened my understanding of how cultural perceptions of sexuality and disability intersect and evolve over time. This is a timely insight that allows me to approach discussions of sexuality and disability, both informed by greater historical and cultural insight. This, once again, reinforces the necessity to question our assumptions and seek diverse perspectives in order to explore the complex relationship between bodily difference and sexual identity.

Wish List:

I hope my artifact inspires viewers to take actions toward the critical examination of their own biases about disability and sexuality. Presenting the ancient perspective on bodily diversity, I want to encourage an approach more inclusive and enabling in the discussions of sexuality within our society. I would like viewers to raise questions about how these ideas about which bodies are desirable or valid sexually came into our minds. I would go further and say that my ultimate wish is for this artifact to catalyze conversations with regard to how we can work toward having an inclusive sexual culture of bodily diversity. I would hope it will spur activities toward the dismantling of ableist structures in our understanding of sexuality and help further a more detailed and historically informed perspective on the location of disability and sexual identity.

Scholarship:

The Seated Woman of Çatalhöyük is a unique artifact to use in examining this intersection, as insights from it offer some firm connections to a few key themes in contemporary scholarship. Key works on crip theory and intellectual disabilities include writings by Löfgren-Mårtenson (2013). However, while the figure from Çatalhöyük does not represent intellectual disability explicitly, it is an encouragement to consider how ancient cultures viewed bodily diversity within the understandings of sexuality. For Löfgren-Mårtenson, crip theory can be mobilized to "problematize concepts such as normal and normalization in relation to disability and sexuality. It shifts us to question our modernist assumptions on which bodies are considered sexually desirable or valid-a theme directly relevant to our interpretation of the Çatalhöyük artifact.
The idea of the "misfit sexual body" that Santos and Santos (2017) are arguing makes perfect sense with the Çatalhöyük figure, whereby a "misfit" is not a body that does not fit, but rather a cultural failure in accommodating and cherishing diversity. This reframes the Çatalhöyük artifact from an image of an "abnormal" body to one of evidence of a culture that may have embraced the diversity of the body and sexuality.

Tepper's (2000) work on the missing discourse of pleasure within discussions of sexuality and disability is particularly germane. The full-bodied form of the Čatalhöyük figure, in a context which is potentially one of veneration, subverts ideas that non-normative bodies are asexual or are unsuitable recipients of sexual pleasure. This artifact could be framed as an ancient counterpoint to the modern tendency Tepper identifies to emphasize in discussions of sexuality and disability only the problematic, while leaving discourse on pleasure and fulfillment underdeveloped.

Stevens' (2010) analysis of media representation of disabled people provides an interesting contrast to that of the Çatalhöyük artifact. Whereas modern media often portrays disabled people either as pathetic or overcoming their disabilities, the Çatalhöyük figure would suggest a potentially more nuanced ancient view. This is a striking contrast in how the view on such diverse bodies changes over time and often does so in ways that have become much more limiting.

Finally, Giertsen et al. (2021) emphasize the importance of reflection on sexuality-in particular, on questions about power and inequity-in teaching sexuality in social work. They urge moving beyond such conceptions of sexuality as a problem for specific groups to wider ones. The Çatalhöyük artifact resonates with this perspective by asking us to redefine the role of sexualities and bodily differences as central aspects of human experiences across time and cultures.

These academic positions enrich the framework within which we interpret the Çatalhöyük artifact in terms of enabling us to transcend the normal/abnormal binary of bodies, question our assumptions about bodily diversity and its relationship to sexuality, and offer a way in which representations of diverse bodies transform through time. The powerful tool of the artifact grounds these abstract theories in a tangible, historical object with which to engage.