ABSTRACT
In the young women’s stories there are many examples of cultural imperialism. They are stereotyped and marked out as the Other as they are met with infantilization, patronizing benevolence or pity and are ascribed deficiency and weakness. One variation of the stereotyping is the positive discrimination that is to be found in the material, as when people are impressed by the interviewees and what they can do ‘despite’ impairment – that is to say, despite their alleged weakness and incompetence. Sometimes they are treated as feeble-minded. The visible physical impairment is assumed to entail an intellectual impairment. The young women make resistance against all this by accentuating their capacity, strength and normality in interviews and video diaries. This can show itself directly, as when they talk about their own muscular strength, skilfulness and abilities. Sometimes they emphasize their own capacity by relating it to boys’ or men’s capacity, as for instance when Felicia proudly tells about how she beat all the boys in her class and in the class above at arm wrestling, or when Hanna, Sara and Ingela describe how they have played and trained with boys and men. The resistance can also be indirect as they distance themselves from the position of the victim or disidentify themselves from other disabled people or from the characteristics ascribed to these others. The discussions on the overprotective parents and the picture of the new, young woman – independent, free and with an abundance of choices – in the media and the political debate, contribute to a dichotomy between, on the one hand, weakness and dependence and, on the other, strength and autonomy. Processes of stigmatization are also present in the young women’s everyday
life. These are manifested in surrounding people’s staring and questions. The wheelchair is in several cases central in the stigmatization, which leads to the young women being deprived of the possibility to define themselves. Everybody has to deal with this, but they do it in different ways. However, curious questions sometimes lead to productive meetings. While strangers’ questions do not bother Malin, Natalie is often embarrassed, gives an abrupt answer and then leaves. Julia chooses to meet the gazes, smile and show that,
‘despite’ her wheelchair, she is ‘just like everyone else’. This way she takes back the right to self-definition. When Maria falls in school she hides her actual feelings and smiles instead, to avoid pity. Yet another example of stereotyping results from the view of disabled
people as non-gendered and asexual that has been documented in previous research. The young women’s resistance against this stereotype is expressed in their compliance with the ideals of the emphasized femininity. At the same time as they challenge the gender regime in sports by doing tough team sports, several interviewees are eager to present themselves as precisely young women and as (hetero)sexual, in one case by dissociating from lesbian people. Here too an implicit ‘despite’ is to be found in their stories. They explain that they can easily get boyfriends, even men without disabilities and who may have ‘a gorgeous body’. This shows that they are still sexually attractive ‘despite’ disability or wheelchair. However, the sexuality that is depicted is carefully kept within the limits of respectability. The participants in this study are also made the Other as they are excluded
or pointed out in compulsory school during the lessons in PE. There is a discrepancy between those well-trained, persistent and committed young women’s successes in disability sports, and the lack of understanding and curiosity that the teachers of PE manifest. The evaluation conducted by the Swedish National Agency for Education in 2002 states that it is ‘unusual that pupils feel out of it’ (Eriksson et al 2003: 27, author’s translation). However, the young women in my study belong to this rare group. In the interview situation Ingela shifts from ‘I’ to ‘we’ when she talks about the exclusion from PE. Instead of standing out as a lonely, vulnerable individual she presents herself as being part of the collective of young disabled people. Ingela has a suggestion for how to improve PE: in dialogue with the teachers she could contribute with her experiences of sporting in a wheelchair. The importance of disability sports clubs is emphasized. The interviewees
have met other disabled people in the clubs. They have not been without friends throughout childhood and adolescence, but, as Jenny says, ‘During all the years when I was growing up it was only me, so to speak. So it was nice coming to a place where you were the same.’ The emotional experiences of oppression are, as Narayan points out, difficult to fully understand for an outsider, no matter how empathetic one is (2004: 220). In the clubs, on the other hand, there are others with similar experiences who ‘feel as I do’ and a collective identity is created. However, the participants talk about problems in sports. The possibility of engaging in different kinds of sports on different levels seems to be limited in disability sports. The young women want hard and ‘professional’ training, but find that in some disability sports clubs they are met with patronizing and infantilizing consideration. They are offered ‘dabbling’ instead of swimming training and they are ‘pampered’. This can be explained by the theory of personal tragedy, according to which these individuals are grievously afflicted, and hence ought to be met with special tolerance and benevolence. This view also permeates SHIF’s policy programme (2006),
which portrays the sportsmen and sportswomen they organize as pitiable and in need of social integration. The lack of choices in the Swedish disability sports movement give rise to
some degree of powerlessness and a difficulty in fulfilling one’s projects. The same could be said about the situation in team sports. The young women accentuate the problems with the gender-mixed teams, or what I prefer to call the men’s team. The women are in the minority and participation is often on the men’s terms. In one team women are not permitted to play matches and several of the young women say that it is difficult to take or be given place in the men’s teams. Thus there are few opportunities to gain recognition. They also remain outside the social intercourse. However, the men’s team is the only alternative for those who want to play team sports. The positive changes that the young women in disability sports have initiated are tangible. Several of the interviewees are leaders in and have been active in starting girls’ groups in different sports clubs. Here sports activities are mixed with discussions and exercises that aim at increased consciousness about their own situation. They also turn outwards to change the attitudes towards young disabled women. Julia is also working to start a women’s national team in her sport. Examples of ambivalence towards the institutions of the welfare states are
also to be found in the material. This is part of what Young calls marginalization (1990/2011: 53-5). The participants of the study are dependent on these institutions to be able to lead an autonomous life. Through this dependency medical professionals are given insight into and control over their lives; hence they run the risk of being subjected to objectification and integrityinfringing treatment. This is evident in the care contacts, when Sara feels she is subjected to extra control during her pregnancy, when Maria defends her bodily integrity before an operation, and when Felicia talks about the annual ‘gathering’ at the Child and Youth Habilitation, and the examination of her almost naked body leads to fragmentation and objectification. At the same time the experiences are ambivalent. They gain access to specialist medical care and know that the operations are performed in their own interest. ‘Maybe you should be grateful’, Sara concludes. Finally they give evidence of oppression in the form of violence. Sara tells
of recurrent bullying in compulsory school. Until the start of school she experienced her body as one of many bodily variations. As her leakage was brutally disclosed at the junior level of compulsory school, she became socially constructed as disabled. She resists, on the one hand, by not attending the lessons in PE during which her body is exposed, and, on the other, when she gets older by choosing friends, clothing, hairstyle, piercings and listening to music that her parents dislike. Sexism and sexual harassment exist in disability sports just as in other
sports. Thus, the genderlessness and asexualization of disabled people are not as obvious here as in the rest of society. What makes the situation for young women in disability sports specific is that there are no women’s teams. The women in team sports who are subject to harassment either have to endure
the harassment or stop playing the sport in question. Julia avoids the position of the victim by ridiculing the men who harass her and by portraying herself as being more able to endure than other women, while Hanna argues against sexism and homophobia. The different forms of resistance can be interpreted as part of their struggle
over the legitimate vision and classification of the world, in general, and of their own bodies and minds, in particular (Bourdieu 1987/1990).
