Sex and Disability

The title of this collection of essays, Sex and Disability, unites two terms that the popular imagination often regards as incongruous. The major texts in sexuality studies, including queer theory, rarely mention disability, and foundational texts in disability studies do not discuss sex in much detail. What if "sex" and "disability" were understood as intimately related concepts? And what if disabled people were seen as both subjects and objects of a range of erotic desires and practices? These are among the questions that this collection's contributors engage. From multiple perspectives-including literary analysis, ethnography, and autobiography-they consider how sex and disability come together and how disabled people negotiate sex and sexual identities in ableist and heteronormative culture. Queering disability studies, while also expanding the purview of queer and sexuality studies, these essays shake up notions about who and what is sexy and sexualizable, what counts as sex, and what desire is. At the same time, they challenge conceptions of disability in the dominant culture, queer studies, and disability studies.

Contributors. Chris Bell, Michael Davidson, Lennard J. Davis, Michel Desjardins, Lezlie Frye, Rachael Groner, Kristen Harmon, Michelle Jarman, Alison Kafer, Riva Lehrer, Nicole Markotic, Robert McRuer, Anna Mollow, Rachel O'Connell, Russell Shuttleworth, David Serlin, Tobin Siebers, Abby L. Wilkerson

“"Though McRuer and Mollow acknowledge that they are not the first to bridge these fields, what they do here, and quite impressively, is to harness the energies of this emerging discourse into a single volume at a defining moment in disability studies and disability culture. . . . One of the anthology's most exciting elements is the complicated interplay its essays stage between body theory and embodied experience."”

"This riveting collection of essays is a fascinating rethinking of what sex and disability could feel like together, affirmatively and generatively. Opening with a candid, frank introduction that moves deftly between the autobiographical and the political, the volume mounts a serious challenge to the sex-ableism of queer theory and the tendency to think of sex and disability in negative terms. Having read about pregnant men, the vagaries of touch, amputee devotees, and sex addiction, the reader will emerge uncertain about what exactly sex is, who has it, and with what. More trenchantly, these works demand an acknowledgement of how notions of ableism severely limit broader experiences of sexual erotics, intimacy, and arousal. Kudos to the editors for undertaking this important project." Jasbir Puar, author of Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times "This is a big collection, literally, politically, and theoretically. With essays drawing on sociology, anthropology, literary studies, history, and cultural studies, as well as some more lyrical, performative, and autobiographical, Sex and Disability will be indispensable for a wide range of audiences in gender studies, disability studies, queer studies and beyond." Siobhan B. Somerville, author of Queering the Color Line: Race and the Invention of Homosexuality in American Culture "Disability and sex have long been intersecting topics of great significance in the disability-rights community, but more often than not have been treated as curiosities by non-disabled people... The new anthology Sex and Disability posits that people with disabilities are a group that has, by and large, either been stigmatized by the able because of their supposed "abnormal" sexuality, or desexualized entirely... Sex and Disability is worth picking up just for the variety of topics it covers - queer sexuality, HIV/AIDS, sexual narratives in autobiographical works by people with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), the 2005 documentary Murderball and athletic disability nationalism, the disability politics of racist hate crimes, gender politics in the online amputee/devotee community, and more." Anna Hamilton, Bitch, Summer 2012

Robert McRuer is Professor of English at the George Washington University. He is the author of Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability and The Queer Renaissance: Contemporary American Literature and the Reinvention of Lesbian and Gay Identities.

Anna Mollow is a PhD candidate in English at the University of California, Berkeley.

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