The Disability Rights Community was Never Mine

Neuroqueer Disidentification

Bibliographic Data

ID2368096
AuthorsJustine E Egner (University of Wisconsin–La Crosse, corresponding author)
Year2019
Volume33
Issue1
Pages123-147
Publication date2019-02-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueGender & Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0891-2432 • E-ISSN: 1552-3977
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0891243218803284
OpenAlexW2899276242
LanguageEN
Citations received38
References cited31

Drawing from contemporary blog data, this article examines an emerging project termed 'neuroqueer.' Neuroqueer is a collaboration of activists, academics, and bloggers engaging in online community building. Neuroqueer requires those who engage in it to disidentify from both oppressive dominant and counterculture identities that perpetuate destructive medical model discourses of cure. It is a queer/crip response to discussions about gender, sexuality, and disability as pathology that works to deconstruct normative identity categories. Blog members employ neuroqueer practices to subversively combat exclusion through rejection of able-hetero assimilation and counteridentification in favor of disidentification. Of particular interest for this special issue are the ways in which neuroqueer perspectives build more fluid conceptualizations of both gender and intersectionality through conscious disidentification from neurotypical norms and medical notions of cure on which they are often unconsciously based

Disability studies · Intersectionality · Disability Rights and Representation · Gender, Feminism, and Media · LGBTQ Health, Identity, and Policy