Neuroqueer Feminism: Turning with Tenderness toward Borderline Personality Disorder

Abstract

This article proposes neuroqueer feminism as an intersectional theoretical model through which to recognize neurodiversity among women (and all minoritized genders) and to resist the stigmatization of neurodivergent people, using feminist scholarship on borderline personality disorder (BPD) as a case study through which to illustrate the need for this new lens. By approaching BPD as a complex, historically misogynistic, yet still salient term for emotion dysregulation, this analysis recasts personality disorders from the traditional medical classification as character defects to the less pejorative language of extreme or anomalous neurobiological states, a linguistic shift modeled on physical disability studies and aligned with the neuroqueer movement. While feminist scholars call regularly to rename BPD or abolish the category, positioning the condition as an artifact of institutional sexism and misogyny, neuroqueer feminism prioritizes destigmatizing borderline personality disorder and invokes feminist disability studies as a framework through which to accomplish this work. Neuroqueer feminism will be nonbinary, postoppositional, pain-centric, and stigmaphilic, turning with tenderness toward borderline personality disorder as a neurologically queer intersectional embodiment. Through a series of friendly disagreements with feminist BPD studies—a field I divide into borderline defenders, befrienders, and up-enders—I define the major tenets of neuroqueer feminism, introduce the problem of neurotypical feminism, and contemplate new directions for feminist BPD studies, including the disruption of its pervasive whiteness.