Intersectional harassment and deviant embodiment among Autistic adults: (dis)ability, gender and sexuality

Abstract

Harassment scholarship increasingly attends to the intersectional nature of harassment and its function within systems of domination. However, little of this work includes disability. In-depth interviews with 24 adults on the autism spectrum in the USA demonstrate the intersections of gender, sexuality and (dis)ability in the construction of deviant embodiments as targets for harassment. These intersections also shape how participants made sense of these experiences of violence. Participants' disability characteristics were often read as gender or sexual variance, with harassers relying on sexist and heterosexist constructs to frighten, demean or humiliate them for disability characteristics. Participant experiences demonstrate the cisgender basis of 'able-bodied' identity as well as the 'able-bodied' basis of cisgender and heterosexual identities and experiences. The interdependency of gender, sexuality and (dis)ability embodiment point to how it is critical for scholars and activists to account for the role of gender and heterosexist harassment in ableist oppression and disability harassment in (hetero)sexist oppression, as well as the limits of current US law enforcement structures in providing redress for harassment.

Sexual knowledge in adolescents with intellectual disabilities: A timely reflection

“…Adolescents express concerns about deviating from the norm, so they may worry a minority sexuality, in addition to ID, would make them too different (Löfgren-Mårtenson, 2009). The nexus between sexuality and ID is an example of intersectionality, that is, both the social differences interact and contribute to a greater level of social oppression or exclusion (Barnett, 2017). To remedy the social exclusion created by intersectionality, each axis of exclusion must be addressed (Meekosha, 2006).…”

Gendered Harassment as Concept and Experience in Educational Spaces

“…40 Furthermore, people with disabilities may become targets of gendered harassment because of misunderstandings that stem from differences in their behavior and comportment, which Jessica Barnett suggests are read through the lens of gender nonconformity. 41 Then again, the pervasiveness of normalized expectations of bodily comportment, and ableist ignorance of bodily, cognitive, and behavioral differences, can lead to misunderstandings of a different sort, in which certain actions by people with disabilities are (mis)read as harassing behavior. Addressing gendered harassment of individuals with disability labels would therefore need to attend to the ways that heteropatriarchal structures intertwine with entrenched ableism to situate "abnormalcy" as a predictor of vulnerability.…”

Can Law Address Intersectional Sexual Harassment? The Case of Claimants with Personality Disorders

“…Barnett's 2017 smaller study of adults on the autism spectrum in the United States found that harassment of people on the autism spectrum often relied on gendered assumptions and that the "conflation of disability, gender and sexuality" determined who was targeted for harassment (Barnett 2017(Barnett , p. 1216. For example, people in this group were less able, because of their autistic traits, to correctly "perform" gender roles, which left them exposed to harassment.…”

“…For example, people in this group were less able, because of their autistic traits, to correctly "perform" gender roles, which left them exposed to harassment. The author concluded that harassment that appeared "sexual" had hidden ableist impacts: "harassment that is nominally gender and/or sexuality based often targets impairment effects, acting as a mechanism of social disablement" (Barnett 2017(Barnett , p. 1220. As with the Shaw, Chan and McMahon study above, Barnett suggests that behavioural impairments make people particular targets of harassment: "deviation of comportment is more closely policed than deviation of physical functioning" (Barnett 2017(Barnett , p. 1212.…”

“…Sexual harassment is experienced differently, and often amplified, according to the race, disability, sexuality and age characteristics of the harassed person and their harasser (Buchanan et al 2018;Chi Cantalupo 2019;Mitchell et al 2014;Onwuachi-Willig 2018;Barnett 2017;Ramakrishnan 2011). Yet thirty years after Crenshaw (1989) first drew attention to anti-discrimination law's failure to see intersectional harms, legal responses to sexual harassment continue to "assume a generic woman victim" (Calafell 2014, p. 81).…”