Pathological Femaleness: Disability Jurisprudence and Ontological Envelopment

Abstract

Aristotle once described women as mutilated males. Pregnancy has been suggested as a class of disability under law and premenstrual ‘syndrome’ has been lauded as a defence to murder. This chapter continues in the discussion of how law imagines disability (the disabled existence) and negotiates some of the torturous questions related to ontology and volition. It explores how the woman question and the disability question can best be resolved through the prism of studies in ableism. As an exemplar the chapter interrogates the legal cartographies of premenstrual syndrome and disability parking, concluding that the notion of ontological envelopment can be engaged either as an instrument of disability resistance or as a force for the rearticulating and (re)pathologisation of femaleness.