Ranging from the late 1880s to the late 1970s children with dis/abilities were orderlyinstitutionalized in Sweden due to lack of accessibility and aids in the surrounding society. The aim of this thesis is to discuss how ableist discourse of dis/ability and gender interacted with materiality, such as buildings, clothes and objects, in the institutions and how it affected the everyday lives of women who grew up there, a concept previously unexplored in a Swedish context. Using a qualitative method interviews were carried out with women who grew up in various institutions in Sweden from the 1930s to 1970s. The interviews were analysed using a crip theoretical understanding of dis/ability and ableism paired with Barad’s post humanist understanding of matter as both product of and producer of discourse. The analysis show that matter was created, used and understood in a constant intra-action with ableist discourse, confining, controlling and subduing the women. Matter and the use of it functioned as a tool for upholding ableism, creating a colonial structure of medical access to the children’s bodies. Hence, the use of matter can be understood as acts of ableist rhetoric created to signalize and uphold ableist standards. Such ableist rhetoric can be said to carry on into the contemporary Swedish understanding of dis/ability, making evident the on-going objectification and medicalization of people with dis/ability today and its intersection with discourses of gender and sexuality.