Institute for Criminal Policy Research, School of Law, Birkbeck College, University of London, 42 Store Street, London WC1E 7DB, United Kingdom.
Int J Law Psychiatry. 2019 Sep-Oct;66:101488. doi: 10.1016/j.ijlp.2019.101488. Epub 2019 Aug 7.
Respect for the sexual, reproductive, and relational choices of women with learning disabilities remains unrealised to date, despite the autonomy-based focus of mental capacity law in England and Wales as well as the UN Convention for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Instead, such women appear trapped within a triple-bind - where they not only act in ways that might reinforce oppressive norms around gender and disability, but they are mentally incapable of even making such self-subjugating choices. The triple-bind emerges for two reasons: first, learning disability is understood as an essentialist property that determines action; second, the normative logic of feminism and the social model of disability is bound to the binary between emancipation - subjugation, which excludes the nuanced and ambiguous agency of women with learning disabilities as a result. What is needed instead is an alternative framework of female agency that can accommodate a mode of ambivalence, indifference, inhabitation, and at times, complicity - in other words, instances where women make choices that appear contrary to their emancipation from disabling, patriarchal norms or relationships. Women with learning disabilities navigate a complex nexus of norms, power relations, and relational connections, some of which are coercive and oppressive, yet simultaneously subjectively affirming and enabling. I argue for an alternative analytical framework of female agency in order to accommodate how women with learning disabilities undertake the complex negotiation of power and social norms, as well as render visible their agency in their sexual, relational, and reproductive choices.
迄今为止，尽管英格兰和威尔士的精神能力法以及《联合国残疾人权利公约》以自主性为重点，但对有学习障碍的女性的性、生殖和关系选择的尊重仍未实现。相反，这些女性似乎陷入了三重困境——她们不仅以可能强化性别和残疾方面的压迫性规范的方式行事，而且甚至没有能力做出这种自我贬低的选择。三重困境的出现有两个原因：第一，学习障碍被理解为一种决定行为的本质属性；第二，女权主义的规范逻辑和残疾的社会模式必然与解放-屈从之间存在二元对立，从而排除了有学习障碍的女性的细微和模糊的能动性。相反，需要的是一种女性能动性的替代框架，该框架可以容纳一种矛盾、冷漠、栖居和有时是共谋的模式——换句话说，就是女性做出的选择似乎与她们从残疾、父权规范或关系中解放出来的选择相反的情况。有学习障碍的女性在规范、权力关系和关系联系的复杂网络中航行，其中一些是强制性和压迫性的，但同时也是主观肯定和支持的。我主张采用一种替代的女性能动性分析框架，以适应有学习障碍的女性如何对权力和社会规范进行复杂的协商，以及使她们在性、关系和生殖选择中的能动性可见。
