Identity politics and discrimination law: addressing essentialism and assimilationism in disability and transgender discrimination law

Essentialism and assimilationism work hand in hand as well as in tension to oppress groups that are different from dominant norms in society. While integrating different groups into society, discrimination law may place undue assimilationist demands on these groups. Yet at the same time, identifying and addressing these assimilationist demands also risk essentializing these identities and ignoring the needs of individuals within these groups. This thesis aims at showing that disability discrimination law provides a framework that can perform anti-assimilationist and anti-essentialist functions, through elements such as non-essentialist grounds of discrimination, more relaxed uses of comparators and duties of reasonable accommodation. Furthermore, this framework can be applied to tackle similar concerns of other different groups in, for example, transgender discrimination law.