“I do not compete in disability”: How wheelchair athletes challenge the discourse of able-ism through action and resistance

Abstract

Drawing on data from face-to-face semi-structured interviews with five male and four female wheelchair athletes and inspired by poststructuralism, this study illuminates the meaning-making processes through which athletes construct and manage their identities. It deals with the interaction of gender, disability and sport and illustrates how the discourse of able-ism operates among Swedish wheelchair racers. The main finding is that the discourse of able-ism has considerable impact on the way the athletes understand themselves and the world, and, thus, on their identity construction. They strive to gain access to the discursive world of able-bodied people and, to that end, they reproduce sports and gender discourses. They strongly resist being positioned as disabled, but in doing so they sometimes reproduce the discourse of able-ism by positioning other disabled people as deviant. Overall, the investigation contributes to a further understanding of how social notions and expectations in contemporary society are reproduced, resisted and deconstructed.