Stigma as a structure of disablement: towards collective postcolonial justice

Global research consistently demonstrates that despite targeted efforts, for historically marginalised and diverse women, the forms, types, and frequency of violence that they experience remain largely unchanged and, in some instances, have only become more intensified and prevalent. In this chapter, we created composite stories by drawing upon media narratives of violence against disabled women, BIPOC women, and sexually and gender-diverse women to reveal the continual stigmatisation of bodies and minds deemed outside the boundaries, borders, and polity of settler colonial nation states-Canada and Australia. By articulating the co-constitution of settler colonialism, gendered violence, and disability, we trace how these violent processes of elimination and exploitation are gendered and gendering, both creating impairments and biopolitical meanings of disability to enable the settler colonial management of different groups. We argue that stigmatisation is a mechanism of settler colonial biopolitical power operating as structures of disablement, which in turn entrenches stigmatised women in conditions in which gendered violence is likely and normalised. Importantly, the stigmatisation process of disablement is one of political struggle; it therefore informs the possibilities of broad-based coalitions against gendered violence that can be mobilised across different gendered and diverse women within and across settler colonial nation states.