Lifting the lid: Disabled toilets as sites of belonging and embodied citizenship

Abstract

This article explores the complex relationship between citizenship, bodies and toileting through the experiences of disabled people. By examining the toiletscapes that disabled people must navigate, the impact that inaccessible toilets have on self and personhood and the hidden inequalities produced through these spaces, we can come to understand disabled people’s sense of (non)belonging. At the centre of this article is a focus on the socio-political dualisms that locate disabled people at the margins of everyday citizenship. Through a feminist phenomenological analysis the toilet and toileting bring to the fore how (non)belonging is felt. Toilet(ing), then, problematises the nature of so-called ‘private’ and ‘public’ spaces and by engaging bodily waste we come to understand citizenship through dirt.