Emily Manock is a 22-year-old French student and writer, who specialises in looking at the world with a disability lens when discussing the world today. She has Cerebral Palsy and ADHD and uses a wheelchair or crutches while getting around.
Note: This article discusses sexual harassment.
For a long time, I have felt like we have needed a word, to describe the intersection between sexism and ableism. In the same way in which transmisogyny and misogynoir express how there are unique challenges created when one exists in two marginalised groups, I believe we need a word to examine the oppression of disabled women.
What I believe links the oppression of disabled people and women is the idea of autonomy (particularly bodily autonomy) and infantilisation. People seem to have so many assumptions about my body and romantic and sexual life, and no matter what I say or do, everyone has their own assumptions and doesn’t listen to me.
It took me some time to experience the kind of street harassment that my non-disabled peers have unfortunately been through since the middle of adolescence.
Maybe it was because of my babyface, or maybe it was because I didn’t dress my age; either way, it took longer for people to see me as a woman.
I do feel like I should add that being seen as a “child” wasn’t exactly a picnic. People seemed to be confused about why I was “out on my own.” Passers-by seemed to want to help me and didn’t want to listen when I told them I could manage. This meant I was often grabbed and guided – without my consent.
I was acutely aware that they were acutely aware that I couldn't run away if the catcallers decided to take my lack of response personally.
However, since turning 20, I have experienced a huge increase in sexual harassment. The change was immediately noticeable. I went from getting catcalled maybe twice in my life to maybe twice a week. I was always acutely aware that they were acutely aware that I couldn’t run away if the catcallers decided to take my lack of response personally. However, by keeping my headphones on and my head down, I could get away without too many issues.
What scares me is the aggressive propositioning. Men trap me in designated disability spaces on public transport, and they take my reluctant half-answers as tacit consent that I would like their number. On the off chance that I do accept help, that will likely also be taken the wrong way. I once had a man questioning me, upon me rejecting him, why “I liked him helping me” if I didn’t want to talk to him, despite the fact I never asked for his assistance.
Women with a disability are almost twice as likely to have experienced sexual assault (5%) as women without a disability (2.8%), according to ONS data for March 2018 to 2020. As well as this, according to the 2019 Crime Survey for England and Wales, disabled women are more than twice as likely to experience domestic violence (17.3%) than non-disabled women (7%).
I have written about these statistics before, and I think about them far too often. I am twice as likely to experience two of the most horrendous things a person can experience because of some doctors’ mistakes before I was even born. Maybe that’s why I always let those men down so gently, because I was terrified of what would happen if I didn’t.
For everyone’s general busy bodying around me as a disabled person, no one has ever stepped in, in these situations. If someone just looked out for me on public transport or in the street, without intruding, I, and many other disabled women, would feel much safer.
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