“I just felt that I was somebody who was there to be abused.” - A sociological analysis of structural causes for delayed naming of sexual violence at the intersection of disability and gender.

Rape convictions in England and Wales are at an all-time low. This leads to the hypothesis that current laws and legal practices do not reflect the lived reality of rape. Given this context it is perhaps less surprising that many (disabled) women do not realise they are experiencing sexual violence as the assault happens. There is a need to examine structural causes, rather than attributing this phenomenon to women’s mental in/capacity. A geographically diverse sample of 36 disabled women across England and Wales who had experienced sexual violence participated in 25 online and two face to face interviews and two face to face focus groups. The data was analysed thematically by applying material feminism and the social model of disability as critical lenses through which “thick” descriptions of internalised sexism and disablism and structural inequalities emerged. The majority of the women reported internalised harmful rape myths. Their sensemaking occurred against a backdrop of everyday disablism, sexism and disempowerment, which lowered women’s expectations. Only a minority described resistance during sexual violence and/or instant realisation, typically in stranger rape cases that were more in line with prevailing rape myths. It must be questioned whether it is even possible to comprehend female consent in the context of a society where misogyny, rape myths and sexism are at times normalised, even more so when this is intersected with. Moving forward legal reform, driven by the reality of women’s experiences, is needed help to us redefine the parameters of rape, in order to align these with the lived realities of those who have survived it.