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School toilets: queer, disabled bodies and gendered lessons of embodiment

SLATER, Jenny
JONES, Charlotte
PROCTER, Lisa
2016

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In this paper we argue that school toilets function as one civilising site [Elias, 1978. The Civilising Process. Oxford: Blackwell] in which children learn that disabled and queer bodies are out of place. This paper is the first to offer queer and crip perspectives on school toilets. The small body of existing school toilet literature generally works from a normative position which implicitly perpetuates dominant and oppressive ideals. We draw on data from Around the Toilet, a collaborative research project with queer, trans and disabled people (aroundthetoilet.wordpress.com) to critically interrogate this work. In doing this we consider ‘toilet training’ as a form of ‘civilisation’, that teaches lessons around identity, embodiment and ab/normal ways of being in the world. Furthermore, we show that ‘toilet training’ continues into adulthood, albeit in ways that are less easily identifiable than in the early years. We therefore call for a more critical, inclusive, and transformative approach to school toilet research.

Intersection between a Social Gender and Disability: A Self-concept of Women with Disabilities in the Post-feminist Context

JANKAUSKAITE Margarita
SUMSKIENE Egle
GRIGAITE Ugne
October 2016

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The goal of this article is to analyse the intersection between a social gender and disability, and identify differences between both the perceived and attached identities of women with disabilities. Two qualitative research studies on women with disabilities in Lithuania reveal ambiguity in the relationship of women with disabilities, towards factors that form their identities. Disability here is realised on a deeper level: it structures respondents’ self-perception and self-reflection. The research also points to the fact that this part of an individual’s identity is straightforwardly perceived in their society and more profoundly ruminated by the women themselves. The ‘invisibility’ of the womanhood here suggests that this part of an identity is perceived as a ‘natural’, unquestionable aspect, which is beyond criticism. Such an attitude absorbs rather than transforms normative provisions and hinders the development of practises directed at subordination of gendering structures.

 

From the perspective of a normative subject, disability and womanhood have equal weights, since both these aspects of identity represent deviation from the ‘norm’, as well as other differences and subordination. However, both these aspects have different meanings in the self-perception of women with disabilities. The social model of disability acknowledges various obstacles in the environment, which hinder personal independence or create disability. Gender on the other hand, is often naturalized, and a systemic gender-based discrimination remains unmentioned. Hence, discriminatory structures related to disability are targeted, but gender subordination remains unchallenged.
 

Disability, family and identity

SCHNEIDER, Cort
October 2016

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Many people with disabilities struggle with issues that relate to identity development.  Many people with disabilities find it difficult to develop a positive sense of self. There is also no question that familial relationships play a significant part in the process of identity construction for people with disabilities. Thus, it is important to examine how family relationships influence the process of identitydevelopment for people with disabilities. Conversely, it relevant to explore how a person’s identity development can impact his or her relationship with family members. This article employs an autoethnographic approach to research in order to examine issues that relate to disability, identity and family. It elucidates the complex nature of family scripts and identity. In addition this paper contends that the process that an individual goes through in order to “come to terms” with a disabled identity, can transform the relationships that an individual has with various family members.

 

Considering Disability, Vol.1, Issue 3&4

DOI: 10.17774/CDJ1.32016.2.20575874

The medical inadmissibility of intellectual disability: A postcolonial reading of Canadian immigration systems

SPAGNUOLO, Natalie
2016

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This article builds upon existing critiques of Canada’s immigration system by focusing on the medical inadmissibility of young people labelled with intellectual disabilities. In considering how the Canadian state regulates applications for permanent residency, it explores discourses and practices of citizenship which invoke mutually-constituting identity markers such as disability and race. A close reading of case studies involving family applicants, demonstrates how immigration policies and legal systems frame the needs of young people labelled with intellectual or ‘profound’ disabilities as a burden to Canadian society. Individuals who were initially denied admission to Canada due to their diagnostic label, experience disability-related discrimination in different ways depending on the role of their perceived racial, gender, and class identities, among others. The individuals considered in this study navigate intersectional identities and ableist legal systems in their efforts to resist discrimination and win a review of their residency applications. This analysis will show that applicants are forced to work through the logic of medical assessment processes to favourably position their children within impairment hierarchies which rank intellectual disability as ‘too disabled’ to be admissible.

 

Disability & the Global South (DGS), 2016, Vol. 3 No. 2

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