Feminist Disability Studies

Rosemarie Garland-Thomson’s article is a key map for entering feminist disability studies. It raises disability from an applied topic to a core problem for feminist theory: if feminism studies embodiment, staring, representation, public space, dependency, and citizenship without analyzing ability norms, its account of body politics remains incomplete.

The article matters because it shows systematically how disability changes feminist questions. Disability studies forces us to rethink how the “normal body” is produced, who is allowed to appear in public, who is understood as beautiful, agentic, sexual, and rational, and who is routed into narratives of care, medicine, or charity.

For FemRes, this paper bridges disability justice and feminist theory. It complements Wendell’s philosophical work, Kafer’s crip futures, and Piepzna-Samarasinha’s care work, making disability not an access checklist but a foundational way to understand gender order.