Disabilities, Pleasures, and Sexualities: Transforming Perceptions, Cultivating Desires

Disabled sexuality has too often been cast as taboo, as disabled people are routinely de-sexualized, infantilized, or positioned as objects of pity and (over)protection. Nevertheless, despite facing numerous obstacles to sexuality, sexual expression, and parenting, individuals with disabilities have consistently showcased resilience, agency, and creativity. Disabilities, Pleasures, and Sexualities: Transforming Perceptions, Cultivating Desires, volume 17 of the Research in Social Science and Disability series, seeks to highlight and celebrate these qualities with contributions that challenge stereotypes, reimagine expressions of sexuality, illuminate aspects of reproduction and parenting, and explore different forms of intimate relationships. They recognize, affirm, and celebrate the reality that many disabled people already live full and fulfilling erotic lives. With contributions that foreground the lived experiences, representations, and self-understandings of disabled people as sexual beings, some contributions explore how disabled individuals and communities resist the social, cultural, and political forces that render their sexualities deviant, invisible, or dangerous. Other contributions turn to the urgent task of transforming sex education, critically examining how sex education for disabled people can be radically transformed. Finally, there are a number of pieces that highlight how disabled people navigate the affective, embodied, and increasingly digital landscapes of intimacy and connection. In sum, this volume imagines sexuality as a site of access, interdependence, creativity, and joy, in hopes that it reshapes the broader sexual cultures in which we all participate.