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Liddiard, Kirsty (2011) (S)exploring disability : intimacies, sexualities and disabilities. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.
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Official URL: http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b2583493~S1
Abstract
This thesis details an empirical exploration of disabled peoples’ lived
experiences of sexual and intimate life. Disabled people are predominantly
desexualised and degendered and within ableist cultures; they are also, as Brown
(1994: 125) states, assigned paradoxical social categories of ‘asexual, oversexed,
innocents, or perverts’. Thus, this thesis begins from the position that disabled
peoples’ access to and experiences of sexual life occur in the context of these
dominant ableist constructions of disabled sexualities, and that the reclamation or
formation of a sexual self requires resistance to, or strategic management and
negotiation of such constructions.
The research methodology worked to the central tenets of consultation,
accessibility, empowerment and relevance. A Research Advisory Group made up of
local disabled people was established, the purpose of which was to guide the
research process, offer expert knowledge, and ensure that the research was
accessible, engaging and empowering for the individuals who took part. Through a
thematic analysis of the sexual stories told by twenty-five disabled people (and one
non-disabled partner), in their own words and on their own terms, this thesis details
the complex and variegated relationships between disability, impairment, sexuality,
and gender.
Findings show that heteronormative discourse had very complicated and
contradictory implications for disabled men and women, but also empowered
disabled men relative to disabled women. Moreover, analysis has illustrated the
‘complex invisible “work” performed by disabled people’ (Church et al 2007: 1)
through participants regularly taking on the roles of teacher, negotiator, manager,
mediator, performer, educator, and resistor within a variety of spaces in their sexual
and intimate lives. While this work was evidence of sexual agency, the majority of
participants’ labours were rooted in the oppressive and inherent inequalities of
ableist culture. Furthermore, the majority of participants experienced extensive
psycho-emotional disablism – ‘the socially engendered undermining of psychoemotional
wellbeing’ (Thomas, 1999: 60) – as routine within their sexual and
intimate lives.
Item Type: | Thesis (PhD) | ||||
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Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HM Sociology H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman |
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Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | People with disabilities -- Sexual behavior, People with disabilities -- Family relationships | ||||
Official Date: | December 2011 | ||||
Dates: |
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Institution: | University of Warwick | ||||
Theses Department: | Department of Sociology | ||||
Thesis Type: | PhD | ||||
Publication Status: | Unpublished | ||||
Supervisor(s)/Advisor: | Wolkowitz, Carol ; Throsby, Karen, 1968- | ||||
Sponsors: | Economic and Social Research Council (Great Britain) (ESRC) | ||||
Extent: | 389 leaves | ||||
Language: | eng |
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