How Colonial Religious Sexism Caused Disability

I can’t be alone.
I can’t be seen alone.
I’m just trying to look capable enough to keep my children.

My Grandmother, My Inheritance

My grandmother was ten when Colonial authorities took her. Unfortunately, colonial religiosity demanded obedience, so she was forced to work on an orphan farm—one of many institutions run by missionaries who saw Indigenous families not as sacred, but as obstacles to be dismantled. Language was forbidden. Culture was punished. Children were converted through fear and forced labour.

Thousands of families destroyed. Thousands of lives lost.

While the harm caused by those early faithful settlers and missionaries began hundreds of years ago, it didn’t end with them. It was written into policy, stitched into schools, embedded in the healthcare system. That violence didn’t just stop—it evolved. It pulses through our institutions, our clinics, our churches, and our courts.

This is how colonial religious sexism caused disability. Not as an accident—but as a consequence of control, erasure, and systemic violence.

The Gospel of Perfection

Growing up, I was always told that when we achieved Celestial Glory, the ultimate reward for a life of obedience and faithfulness… that I would be made perfect. My body would be healthy and my body would be beautiful. It would be without flaw.

Being told that I was meant to be who I was, just as I was, was not a part of my upbringing. It did not align with my family’s faith values.

I remember sitting there in church and observing the congregation, wondering who would look the most different. I would imagine the disabled members walking, and all of the seniors’ years of wisdom hidden by their smooth and wrinkle-free skin.

No canes, no wheelchairs, no scars. Everyone clean, orderly, “fixed.”

That’s what I was taught to hope for. Perfection. Transformation.

The Roots of That Belief

And that idea—that healing means erasure—wasn’t unique to my church. It has roots. Deep roots.

Colonial missionaries didn’t just bring the Bible—they brought rigid gender roles, bodily shame, and the belief that physical difference was a reflection of moral failure. Many early Christian teachings framed illness, disability, and nonconformity as the result of sin, impurity, or disobedience.

This doctrine was then fused with the project of colonization. In order to “civilize” the people they encountered, missionaries and colonizers sought to erase the things they considered unclean—language, sexuality, tradition, and the body itself.

In many Indigenous cultures, disabled people, elders, and gender-diverse individuals held respected roles. But under colonial Christian rule, these people were reclassified as unfit. Broken. In need of correction or exclusion.

Women and girls were taught in churches around the world to submit to patriarchy—to their husbands, to male leaders, to systems that placed obedience above well-being. This wasn’t just spiritual—it became structural.

Gender roles established during colonization stripped communities of their inclusive frameworks. They replaced relational balance with hierarchy. They replaced reverence for difference with punishment for it.

For more context, see the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada and the Council of Canadians with Disabilities.

No Room to Be Whole

So when you’re taught that goodness looks like obedience and flawlessness, there’s no room for struggle, for difference, for pain. There’s no space to be disabled and still be whole.

Religious sexism didn’t just shape what we believed about ourselves—it shaped laws, healthcare, education. It taught doctors to ignore women’s pain. It taught policymakers to decide which bodies were worth supporting and which ones were a burden. It taught whole communities to treat disability as a punishment, a shame, a secret.

And that belief—that disability is something to be corrected or erased—didn’t stay in the pews. It entered classrooms, clinics, social services, and courtrooms. It entered our culture.

What They Would’ve Done to Me Then

In this ideal world, during the early 1900s to 1970s—I might have been sterilized without my consent.

I might have had my child taken from me.

I might have been institutionalized.

And I definitely would have been treated as a threat to the moral order and labeled immoral.

The Modern Legacy

As a woman who gave birth to two babies after becoming disabled, our country’s history terrifies me. But I still feel its effects. I was once on the news advocating for disabled moms, and the comments on social media were full of criticism toward me for choosing to have children. The news page couldn’t delete them fast enough.

Friends told me I was selfish.

After giving birth to my first baby, my very Christian father-in-law told my husband not to have another. After giving birth to my second, my very Christian mother-in-law went into detail about all the risks of a third. When I joked about getting pregnant again, my own mother’s pro-life stance suddenly came with exceptions. I think we call that pro-choice… Or is it eugenics?

These weren’t just personal opinions. These reactions came from generations of conditioning—rooted in early Christian teachings that cast disabled people as flawed, women as vessels, and suffering as either punishment or purification. The Christianity that shaped my family told them that perfection was godly, and anything less was a burden. That legacy didn’t skip me—it sat beside me in hospital rooms, in living rooms, and in the comments section.

Unfit by Default

That legacy still shapes who gets to be seen as a good mother, a capable parent, a worthy life. It’s in the policies that make it harder for disabled people to access reproductive care. It’s in the social services that flag our families as high-risk. It’s in the hospitals that assume we can’t make our own decisions.

It’s in the subtle disbelief I meet when I say I’m a mother. It’s in the way doctors speak to my partner instead of me. It’s in the fear that I’ll be seen as irresponsible for wanting more children—just because I live in a disabled body.

What began as a theology of obedience became a culture of control. That’s how colonial religious sexism caused disability—not just in the body, but in the way we’re allowed to live in our bodies.

The Weight of Being Watched

When systems are built on the belief that we are broken, those systems stop listening to us.

Dehumanization doesn’t always look loud. Sometimes it looks like a doctor not believing you’re in pain. A nurse speaking to your partner like you’re not in the room. A social worker “just checking in” a little too often.

It looks like assumptions that you’re unstable, unsafe, or incapable—before anyone’s even asked a question.

These aren’t one-off moments. They’re the result of generations of policy shaped by religious ideas that defined some bodies as pure and others as defective. Ideas that taught institutions to separate, sterilize, and surveil.

Canada’s sterilization laws stayed on the books until the 1970s. Indigenous women are still reporting coerced procedures as recently as the 2000s. Today, disabled parents are more likely to have their children taken from them—not because they’ve done harm, but because they’re seen as a risk by default.

See related cases in the Eugenics Archive Canada.

That’s not protection. That’s legacy.

Stress Is a Systemic Injury

Chronic stress causes disability. It burns through the nervous system, corrodes mental health, and shuts the body down.

I have like four panic attacks a day, stressed about my kids’ school performance, how clean their clothes look, if their socks match… I’m constantly under pressure to be perceived as capable.

I live with chronic, debilitating fear that I’ll lose my children because of my health. And if that happens, people will blame me—they won’t look around.

I live with chronic, debilitating fear that something will happen to my husband. Because what would become of us without him?

Is someone going to show up? Are they going to be here? Will they be able to get the kids?

I can’t be alone with the girls.

I can’t be seen alone.

This is how colonial religious sexism causes disability: by creating the conditions where shame and fear become illness.

A System Built to Break Us

And it wasn’t subtle.

• Missionaries rewrote Indigenous laws to put men in charge, replacing matriarchal and Two-Spirit leadership with Christian patriarchy.
• Women were excluded from land ownership and decision-making, unless it was through their husbands.
• Girls were taught their highest calling was childbirth—until they weren’t the right kind of girl. Then it was sterilization.
• Religious-run schools punished children for speaking their own languages or resisting gender norms. Corporal punishment wasn’t abuse—it was “discipline.”
• Sexual abuse was rampant in church-run institutions, and survivors were blamed or silenced, their pain reframed as spiritual weakness.

This wasn’t about God. This was about control. And it left us with generations of trauma misdiagnosed as disorder. With nervous systems stuck in survival mode. With bodies breaking down under the weight of shame.

Colonial religious sexism didn’t just change laws. It got inside people. Inside families. Inside medicine. And we’re still paying the price—sometimes with our health, sometimes with our kids, and often with our silence.

Then and Now: How Colonial Religious Sexism Caused Disability

Then: Disabling Through Direct Violence and Control

Colonial religious systems didn’t just stigmatize disability—they created it.

• Children were physically abused in residential schools and orphan homes. Many developed chronic injuries, head trauma, or neurological disorders.
  → UBC Indigenous Foundations
• Medical care was deliberately denied. Broken bones were left to heal improperly. Infections went untreated. Survivors live with lifelong physical impairments.
  → Public Health Reviews
• Malnutrition was systemic, stunting growth and damaging organ function.
  → First Nations Health Authority
• Forced labor imposed on children and women led to long-term spinal, joint, and muscular issues.
  → The Indigenous Foundation
• Isolation and institutionalization caused intellectual, developmental, and emotional disabilities.
  → UBC Indigenous Foundations
• Religious trauma and cultural erasure fractured mental health—leading to complex PTSD, suicidality, and generational dissociation.
  → ScienceDirect – Intergenerational trauma

This was the weaponization of faith. It didn’t just punish—it physically and psychologically disabled.

Now: Disabling Through Systemic Neglect and Pressure

The tools have changed. The goal hasn’t.

• Mothers with disabilities in Canada are disproportionately separated from their children—not because of harm, but because of assumptions about their capabilities.
  Jean Pauls, a quadriplegic mother, had to fight for custody despite being fully able to parent (NAWL). In Ontario, a study found that mothers with disabilities were overrepresented in newborn apprehensions by child welfare services—935 of 3,505 cases involved disabled mothers (TVO). Among mothers with intellectual disabilities, 6% had their babies taken at birth (SAGE Journals). These numbers reflect a system that still equates disability with unfitness—and punishes difference with removal.
• Chronic stress from surveillance—fear of judgment, fear of losing benefits, fear of losing your kids—literally damages the brain and nervous system.
  → Public Health Reviews
• Disabled people receive substandard healthcare, are misdiagnosed, or ignored entirely, leading to complications that could’ve been prevented.
  → Public Health Reviews
• Lack of reproductive care for disabled and poor women—including contraception, abortion, and prenatal support—leads to complex pregnancies and worsened health.
  → Native Women’s Association of Canada – Forced Sterilization
• Religious ideologies still inform policy around reproductive rights, gender roles, and disability—creating moral judgment instead of support.
  → Wikipedia – Reproductive Justice

Today, the punishment is more polite. It’s written in funding gaps, denied benefits, and “concerns” about capacity. But the outcome is the same:

Our bodies break under systems built to control them.

We Didn’t Build This Pressure

We didn’t build this pressure. We inherited it.

But we don’t have to pass it on.

It’s time to name where it came from.

And then begin the work of burning it down.

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