Full Description
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 Markotić, Robert McRuer, Anna Mollow, Rachel O'Connell, Russell Shuttleworth, David Serlin, Tobin Siebers, Abby L. Wilkerson
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction / Anna Mollow and Robert McRuer 1
Part I: Access 1
1. A Sexual Culture for Disabled People / Tobin Siebers 37
2. Bridging Theory and Experience: A Critical-Interpretive Ethnography of Sexuality and Disability / Russell Shuttleworth 54
3. The Sexualized Body of the Child: Parents and the Politics of "Voluntary" Sterilization of People Labeled Intellectually Disabled / Michel Desjardins 69
Part II: Histories
4. Dismembering the Lynch Mob: Intersecting Narratives of Disability, Race, and Sexual Menace / Michelle Jarman 89
5. "That Cruel Spectacle": The Extraordinary Body Eroticized in Lucas Malet's The History of Sir Richard Calmady / Rachel O'Connell 108
6. Pregnant Men: Modernism, Disability, and Biofuturity / Michael Davidson 123
7. Touching Histories: Personality, Disability, and Sex in the 1930s / David Serlin 145
Part III: Spaces
8. Leading with Your Head: On the Borders of Disability, Sexuality, and the Nation / Nicole Markotic and Robert McRuer 165
9. Normate Sex and Its Discontents / Abby L. Wilkerson 183
10. I'm Not the Man I Used to Be: Sex, HIV, and Cultural "Responsibility" / Chris Bell 208
Part IV: Lives
11. Golem Girl Gets Lucky / Riva Lehrer 231
12. Fingered / Lezlie Frye 256
13. Sex as "Spock": Autism, Sexuality, and Autobiographical Narrative / Rachel Groner 263
Part V: Desires
14. Is Sex Disability?: Queer Theory and the Disability Drive / Anna Mollow 285
15. An Excess of Sex: Sex Addiction as Disability / Lennard J. Davis 313
16. Desire and Disgust: My Ambivalent Adventures in Divoteeism / Alison Kafer 331
17. Hearing Aid Lovers, Pretenders, and Deaf Wannabees: The Fetishizing of Hearing / Kristen Harmon 355
Works Cited 373
Contributors 393
Index 399
