ABSTRACT
The meanings of disability and gender are taken for granted in dominant Western contexts. Both are presumed to be the inevitable consequence of "bodymind" characteristics. However, just as feminist theory questions the taken-for-grantedness of gender, disability studies advance a critical approach to disability that denaturalizes and politicizes it. Feminist disability studies is an interdisciplinary field that draws upon both disability studies' critique of disability and feminist theory's critique of sex and gender, along with their co-constitutive interrelationship with other axes of difference such as race, class, and sexuality in an effort to forge new understanding of power and difference. Queer disability studies, or crip theory, shares feminist disability studies' interest in understanding the mutually reinforcing relationship between gender, sexuality, and disability. While the distinction between the medical and social models of disability has been politically useful in the fight against disability discrimination, a critique of the social model has emerged within disability studies.
