The work of disabled identities in intimate relationships

Abstract

This article details a thematic analysis of disabled men and women's accounts of past and present intimate relationships. Drawing upon the sexual stories of 25 disabled people, informants' intimate relationships are explored as a site of emotional work (Hochschild 1983), as well as a site of other forms of (gendered) work. This article critically questions the work carried out by informants and considers the ways in which it was shaped by their lived experiences of gender, sexuality, impairment and disability. It concludes that the requirement to carry out forms of work within intimate and sexual life constituted a form of psycho-emotional disablism (Thomas 1999).Keywords: disability; gender; sexuality; intimate; emotional work Points of Interest This article considers disabled people's experiences of "love" relationships. The research found that both disabled men and women carried out "work" within these relationships. Usually, this work was shaped by the ways in which they felt about, or experienced, their gender, sexuality, impairment and disability. I question what this work means for disabled people, and argue that it is a form of disablism.

Posthuman disability studies

“…Our analysis fits well with the emerging scholarship and activism of the critical disability studies field which we read as questioning traditional and normative understandings of the human individual and, as way of response, offering new, collectivist and crip alternatives that fit well with the posthuman manifesto outlined by scholars such as Braidotti and Haraway (e.g. McRuer, 2006;Campbell, 2009;Shildrick, 2009Shildrick, , 2012Meekosha and Shuttleworth, 2009;Goodley, 2007Goodley, , 2011Goodley, , 2013Kafer, 2013;Slater, 2013;Liddiard, 2012Liddiard, , 2014Mallett and Runswick Cole, 2014;Feely, 2014).…”

“…Williams and Shoultz, 1982). Disability, then, emerges in these contemporary (posthuman) times as a moment of relational ethics: urging us to think again about how we are all made through our connections with others and encouraging us to embrace ways of love and life that are not rigidly framed by humanistic values of independence and autonomy (exemplified we would argue in the recent work of Liddiard, 2012Liddiard, , 2014Titchkosky, 2014). Critical disability studies projects are, we would suggest, entirely commensurate with theories of the posthuman.…”

‘Like, pissing yourself is not a particularly attractive quality, let’s be honest’: Learning to contain through youth, adulthood, disability and sexuality

“…The research was collectively managed by a Research Advisory Group made up of local disabled people who guided the research throughout. More can be read in Liddiard (2013aLiddiard ( , 2013b.…”

The Sexual Politics of Disability, Twenty Years On

“…Papers about sexuality and relationships pop up intermittently in Disability and Society, but often concentrating on the issues of sex work (Sanders 2007, Fritsch et al 2016 and sexual facilitation (Earle 1999, Bahner 2015, or else issues of sexual abuse -all of which are important, but perhaps not central to the everyday expression of sexuality for most disabled people. A very positive exception is the empirical research by Kirsty Liddiard (2013) on the emotional work which disabled people perform within relationships. The journal Alter has published very few papers discussing sex and sexuality (e.g.…”