Mapping ableism's intersectionality: Insights from a feminist research group

Ableism has been theorised, criticised and discussed between disabled people's activism and academia, mostly within the field of Disability Studies and less within Intersectionality and Gender Studies. Disabled people's social movements have criticised ableism for decades to highlight their oppression based on binary ideas of the normal and the deviant. Disability Studies has conceptualised ableism as a profoundly naturalised system of thought based on the hierarchisation of embodied abilities and the fetish of independence and productivity. The current study is part of a larger research project conducted by a feminist research group, and our research question was: how, by/for whom and for what purpose has ableism so far been intersectionally conceptualised in theory, research, activism and artwork? One of the project's aims is to combine a variety of sources on and approaches to ableism, which is why we conducted a) a systematic search of academic databases and b) a purposeful selection of additional sources based on our situated knowledges to identify sources on ableism's intersectionality, particularly the intersections of dis/ability and gender. Based on documented discussions of our final sample of 24 different sources on ableism in our research group, we organised our findings around two overarching aspects: Shaping and enforcing intersectional ableism and Surviving and disrupting ableism . While our research highlights the adverse impacts of intersectional oppression, it also emphasises the power and strength rooted in intersectionality. Disability as experiential background is not limited to discrimination either – it comes with joy and community and is an ever-present part of human life beyond the meaning given to it by the neoliberal imperative of independence and self-sufficiency. Ableism, in turn, does not only exist in the lives of disabled people; in its intersectionality it affects the way society is shaped as a whole.