Disability, culture, and erased sexuality: curated raw narratives of disabled women with significant impairments in India

Abstract

Disabled women with significant impairments (DWSI) are not adequately recognised within feminist disability studies. They face stigma, carnal taboos, and systemic exclusion from economies of desire and sexuality. Their voices are seldom heard, and their stories, when captured, are whitewashed. There is an urgent need for these women to gain voice and visibility as a unique category within the political spectrum of women with disabilities so that their unique challenges can be identified and their rights restored. In-depth research aimed at spotlighting their unique challenges and vulnerabilities using ‘raw narratives’ as a novel method, exposed their tabooed and otherwise censored embodied experiences. This paper presents a candid case study of one such woman in India using narrative inquiry and autoethnography. Carol Thomas’ notion of ‘impairment effects’ and Margrit Shildrick’s concept of ‘embodied precarity’ are used to highlight how impairment effects, coupled with inadequate care infrastructure in India, force disabled women with significant impairments into chronic states of dependency and precarity, leading to an internalised loss of self-worth and agency. The wider use of raw narratives as a lens to probe unspoken elements of human experience and further study of DWSI as a community could enrich feminist disability studies.