Intersectionality has become the primary analytic tool that feminist and anti-racist scholars deploy for theorizing identity and oppression. This paper exposes and critically interrogates the assumptions underpinning intersectionality by focusing on four tensions within intersectionality scholarship: the lack of a defined intersectional methodology; the use of black women as quintessential intersectional subjects; the vague definition of intersectionality; and the empirical validity of intersectionality. Ultimately, my project does not seek to undermine intersectionality; instead, I encourage both feminist and anti-racist scholars to (...) grapple with intersectionality's theoretical, political, and methodological murkiness to construct a more complex way of theorizing identity and oppression. (shrink)

Based on in-depth interviews and fieldwork, this article examines mothers raising kids with invisible, social/emotional/behavioral disabilities to refine feminist theories of mother-blame. The mother-valor/mother-blame binary holds mothers responsible for families and future citizens, maintaining this “natural” care at the center of normative femininity. The author explores how mothers raising such burdensome children understand their experiences and makes three arguments: Fewer mothers are blamed for causing their child's troubles in an era of “brain-blame,” but more are blamed as proximate causes if (...) they do not make unrelenting efforts, paralleling “concerted cultivation,” to resolve them; such mothers often exceed concerted cultivation, as they seize authority, as vigilantes, within educational and medical systems in the midst of turf wars, cost containment, and a resulting proliferation of medication treatments; and this maternal speedup holds mothers accountable for feminizing ties to sons, for policing gender boundaries while policing their own feminine care. In sum, mothers raising invisibly disabled kids may represent the model of maternal valor for an era of public stinginess and extensive medicalization. (shrink)

In Feminist, Queer, Crip Alison Kafer imagines a different future for disability and disabled bodies. Challenging the ways in which ideas about the future and time have been deployed in the service of compulsory able-bodiedness and able-mindedness, Kafer rejects the idea of disability as a pre-determined limit. She juxtaposes theories, movements, and identities such as environmental justice, reproductive justice, cyborg theory, transgender politics, and disability that are typically discussed in isolation and envisions new possibilities for crip futures and feminist/queer/crip alliances. (...) This bold book goes against the grain of normalization and promotes a political framework for a more just world. (shrink)

Research on the U.S. women’s movement has documented the difficulties of cross-racial work between White women and women of racial/ethnic minorities. Less understood is how racial/ethnic minorities do cross-racial work among themselves to construct a collective identity of “women of color” that encourages solidarity across race, class, and other statuses. Drawing on research from the reproductive justice movement, I examine how women of color organizations that strive for intersectional praxis negotiate sameness and difference. I identify two different logics at work (...) within women of color organizations: the first relies on a presumption of “same difference” that emphasizes similar experiences of gender and race oppression; the second accords greater recognition to the “difference-in-sameness” that structures constituents’ lived experiences. While the former can reproduce precisely those forms of silencing and exclusion that women of color organizations seek to challenge, the second remains a ongoing process. The article concludes that women of color organizations must strive continuously to actively negotiate, rather than assume, commonality if they are to avoid reproducing various forms of marginalization and inequality. (shrink)

Feminist scholars have been critical of the expectations placed upon mothers to accomplish a perfect version of motherhood, but have often failed to interrogate the values about normalcy and disability imbedded in modern mothering ideologies. Mothers with disabilities are well positioned to expose the underlying beliefs about normalcy with which all mothers must contend. Drawing from interviews and focus groups conducted with mothers who have physical and sensory disabilities, I explore Deaf/disabled women’s experiences negotiating the scientific motherhood regime. Illuminating a (...) paradox, I argue these women are labeled “risky mothers” under scientific motherhood, which prizes the management of risk and the prevention of disability. Yet, these mothers are simultaneously rendered invisible by inaccessible and inflexible medical practices, and by a consumer market of expert advice which prescribes that mothers inhabit a typical body. These women’s experiences illuminate the normalcy project as a central tenet of scientific motherhood. (shrink)

Pregnancy-based employment discrimination has long been a topic of interest for gender inequality scholars and civil rights agencies. Prior work suggests that employer stereotypes and financial interests leave pregnant women vulnerable to being fired. We still know little, however, about women’s interpretations of their terminations and how employers justify such decisions in the face of arguably protective laws. This article provides much needed, in-depth analyses of such dynamics and a relational account of pregnancy-based employment discrimination claims. Elaborating on theoretical expositions (...) of power and research surrounding the patriarchal character of organizational life, we draw on unique quantitative and qualitative data from verified cases of pregnancy-based firing discrimination. Our analyses reveal a two-pronged legitimation process where employers symbolically vilified pregnant workers while simultaneously amplifying ostensibly meritocratic organizational procedures and concerns. Pregnancy discrimination plaintiffs attempted to counter employer arguments. Yet, their limited power within the organizational hierarchy along with the culturally resonant nature of employer logics—logics that seem gender-neutral but that reify gendered assumptions and prioritize business profit—place pregnant women at a considerable disadvantage. Without attending to such cultural and structural power imbalances and the relational processes that undergird them, pregnancy discrimination will remain a significant problem. (shrink)

Fetal ultrasonography has made women's and men's relationship to the fetus more equal. Drawing on information obtained from multiple conjoint interviews with 62 childbearing couples, I suggest that although women and men are both advantaged by fetal ultrasonography, expectant fathers' experience of the fetus is always enhanced, whereas pregnant women's experience may also be attenuated. For men, fetal ultrasonography is like a prosthetic device: an enabling mechanism that permits them access to a female world from which they have been excluded (...) because of their limited biological role in reproduction. For women, fetal ultrasonography is enabling, but it may also be a disabling mechanism that disrupts their privileged access to the fetus. (shrink)

Despite the 1970s middle-class feminist dream that women could have it all—families characterized by equitable distributions of household labor and interesting careers—the decades since have told a different story. In the U.S. context of a neoliberal labor market and privatized systems of family care, mothers still struggle to negotiate the conflicting demands of family and employment, particularly when caring for children with disabilities. Though an extensive literature examines labor market participation for mothers of children with disabilities, few scholars have examined (...) the emotional impact of their altered career plans. Drawing from a sample of 40 single- and two-parent families, the author examines mothers’ accounts of care for children with disabilities, focusing on their emotional experiences of their changed employment trajectories. (shrink)