Whose personal is more political: Women who use drugs and the feminist movement

By Judy Chang

I am a feminist. I am a woman who uses drugs. Up until recently, these identities have been mutually exclusive, having rarely been held together in the same conceptual space.

Only now are the links between drug policy, feminism and drug use beginning to be drawn. Feminism, I took to early on, as any woman who questioned dominant paradigms, interrogated inequities in political and social life and was sceptical of the ways gendered norms condition how we speak, act, behave and interact with one another.

Twenty years ago, university life introduced me to the feminist movement. Grounded in radical politics, it was liberating, insightful and welcoming of diverse communities and identities, including women of colour, indigenous women, lesbian, bisexual, queer and trans* women and women living with disabilities. The only exceptions, at the time, were female sex workers and women who use drugs.