Sex and Disability

by McRuer, Robert; Mollow, Anna

• ISBN13: 9780822351542
• ISBN10: 0822351544
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-01-04
• Publisher: Duke Univ Pr

Summary

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

Author Biography

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 Ph.D. candidate in English at the University of California, Berkeley.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
Access
A Sexual Culture for Disabled People	p. 37
Bridging Theory and Experience: A Critical-Interpretive Ethnography of Sexuality and Disability	p. 54
The Sexualized Body of the Child: Parents and the Politics of "Voluntary" Sterilization of People Labeled Intellectually Disabled	p. 69
Histories
Dismembering the Lynch Mob: Intersecting Narratives of Disability, Race, and Sexual Menace	p. 89
"That Cruel Spectacle": The Extraordinary Body Eroticized in Lucas Malet's The History of Sir Richard Calmady	p. 108
Pregnant Men: Modernism, Disability, and Biofuturity	p. 123
Touching Histories: Personality, Disability, and Sex in the 1930s	p. 145
Spaces
Leading with Your Head: On the Borders of Disability, Sexuality, and the Nation	p. 165
Normate Sex and Its Discontents	p. 183
I'm Not the Man I Used to Be: Sex, HIV, and Cultural "Responsibility"	p. 208
Lives
Golem Girl Gets Lucky	p. 231
Fingered	p. 256
Sex as "Spock": Autism, Sexuality, and Autobiographical Narrative	p. 263
Desires
Is Sex Disability? Queer Theory and the Disability Drive	p. 285
An Excess of Sex: Sex Addiction as Disability	p. 313
Desire and Disgust: My Ambivalent Adventures in Devoteeism	p. 331
Hearing Aid Lovers, Pretenders, and Deaf Wannabes: The Fetishizing of Hearing	p. 355
Works Cited	p. 373
Contributors	p. 393
Index	p. 399
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