“Forced Intimacy” refers to the common, daily experience of disabled people being expected to share personal parts of themselves to survive in an ableist world. This includes being expected to share personal information with able bodied people to get basic access.
Disabled people have to build and sustain emotional intimacy and relationships with someone in order to get access—to get safe, appropriate and good access.
- often requires touching of our bodies.
- Feels exploitative, exhausting and at times violating
- With strangers or those who are actively harassing
- Often takes place without consent
Source: Coined by Mia Mingus in 2011
Image Description: Black text on white background with National Disability Theater, Sound Theater, and Calling Up Justice logos.
FURTHER READING
Forced Intimacy: An Ableist Norm: Forced Intimacy: An Ableist Norm
Forced Intimacy: An Ableist Norm
https://wocinsolidarity.tumblr.com/post/164097758251/forced-intimacy-an-ableist-norm
Access Intimacy and Institutional Ableism: Raju Rage on the problem with ‘inclusion’ by Raju Rage
Shifting the Weight of Inaccessibility: Access Intimacy as a Critical Phenomenological Ethos-by Desiree Valentine
https://journals.oregondigital.org/index.php/pjcp/article/view/4781