Narrative 6: Affection and emancipation: the friendship of four disabled women

We are four disabled women from different regions of Brazil, who continue to gather virtually after meeting at the Helen Keller Feminist Collective of Women with Disabilities. When we began our online connection, we did not imagine that the group would become not only a space for sharing personal experiences, but also for strengthening our daily coping strategies against ableism. Even without intending to turn our friendship into a political space, we realize that the intersection of gender and disability politicizes it. Our meeting made us embody one of the “key ideas” of the feminist movement: the personal is political. Here we learn that affection can be political, as we call for contextual changes that will be beneficial to those we love, and to those we don’t know - millions of girls and women with disabilities, their daughters and caregivers of disabled people.