Looking at lived experiences of self‐advocacy through gendered eyes: becoming femme fatale with/out ‘learning difficulties’

Abstract

In this article, we attempt to intersect the interdisciplinary characters of disability studies and gender studies, in order to make sense of the activism and lived knowledge of/with two women with the label of ‘learning difficulties’. Inspired by Deleuze and Guattari’s anti‐essentialist notion of devenirs‐particules, we find our multiple selves involved in cross‐cutting relational storytelling, as such destabilising essentialist, biological determinism towards women with/out the label of ‘learning difficulties’. Thus in becoming femme(s) fatale(s), we make the most of a science capable of grasping the continual interplay between agency, structure and context, creating a ‘becoming space’ where we, as activists with our academic allies, can think and act with one another.

Keywords:

• disability studies
• poststructuralist feminism
• Braidotti
• Deleuze and Guattari
• ‘learning difficulties’
• self‐advocacy

Acknowledgements

We would like to say merci beaucoup to Professor Rosi Braidotti and to our friend, Professor Dan Goodley, for their inspirational world views.

Notes

1. We use the term people with (the label of) ‘learning difficulties’ in line with the current practice of the British self‐advocacy movement People First. As one British self‐advocate stated: ‘If you put people with “learning difficulties” then they know that people want to learn and to be taught how to do things’. People with ‘learning difficulties’ are referred to in different ways, for example people with learning disabilities, people with intellectual disabilities, people with cognitive impairments, the mentally retarded, and so on.

2. Two authors of this piece – Rosa Reinaart and Marie Adams – have choosen pseudonyms to preserve their anonymity.