ABSTRACT
By focusing on the intersections of disability and gender, this chapter demonstrates how ‘crossings’ between these categories have the potential to subvert patriarchy and upset notions of the ‘normal’ and the ‘natural’. Disability studies have sought to complicate understandings of disability as a social and political category rather than simply as a medical condition; feminists have further drawn attention to the critical role of gender and the body in shaping the experience of disability. This chapter draws attention to the reframing of disability from an individual misfortune/biomedical condition to a sociopolitical category with special reference to the contributions of feminist scholarship. The chapter also discusses the intersections of disability and gender in framing identity and experience. It examines a specific disability, autism spectrum disorder, through the lens of gender and the embodied differences that it entails. Autism is understood to be a condition which impacts social understanding, language and communication. As gender roles and identities are socially learnt, practised and transacted, it is interesting to consider how individuals who have difficulty in negotiating the social world enact gender within these spaces. The chapter argues that the insights gained by engaging with such experiences of difference and dissonance can greatly enrich academic understandings of embodiment and identity.
