Sex and Disability

Sex and diSability Sex and diSability RobeRt McRueR and anna Mollow, editoRs duke univerSity PreSS duRhaM and london 201 2 © 2012 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper ♾ Designed by Nicole Hayward Typeset in Minion Pro by Tseng Information Systems, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data and republication acknowledgments appear on the last printed page of this book. ContentS Acknowledgments / ix Introduction / 1 AnnA Mollow And RobeRt McRueR Part i: aCCeSS 1 A Sexual Culture for Disabled People / 37 tobin SiebeRS 2 Bridging Theory and Experience: A Critical- Interpretive Ethnography of Sexuality and Disability / 54 RuSSell ShuttlewoRth 3 The Sexualized Body of the Child: Parents and the Politics of “Voluntary” Sterilization of People Labeled Intellectually Disabled / 69 Michel deSjARdinS Part ii: HiStorieS 4 Dismembering the Lynch Mob: Intersecting Narratives of Disability, Race, and Sexual Menace / 89 Michelle jARMAn 5 “That Cruel Spectacle”: The Extraordinary Body Eroticized in Lucas Malet’s The History of Sir Richard Calmady / 108 RAchel o’connell 6 Pregnant Men: Modernism, Disability, and Biofuturity / 123 MichAel dAvidSon 7 Touching Histories: Personality, Disability, and Sex in the 1930s / 145 dAvid SeRlin Part iii: SPaCeS 8 Leading with Your Head: On the Borders of Disability, Sexuality, and the Nation / 165 nicole MARkotiĆ And RobeRt McRueR 9 Normate Sex and Its Discontents / 183 Abby l. wilkeRSon 10 I’m Not the Man I Used to Be: Sex, hiv, and Cultural “Responsibility” / 208 chRiS bell Part iv: liveS 11 Golem Girl Gets Lucky / 231 RivA lehReR 12 Fingered / 256 lezlie FRye 13 Sex as “Spock”: Autism, Sexuality, and Autobiographical Narrative / 263 RAchAel GRoneR Part v: deSireS 14 Is Sex Disability? Queer Theory and the Disability Drive / 285 AnnA Mollow 15 An Excess of Sex: Sex Addiction as Disability / 313 lennARd j. dAviS 16 Desire and Disgust: My Ambivalent Adventures in Devoteeism / 331 AliSon kAFeR 17 Hearing Aid Lovers, Pretenders, and Deaf Wannabes: The Fetishizing of Hearing / 355 kRiSten hARMon Works Cited / 373 Contributors / 393 Index / 399 aCknowledgmentS In December of 2004 we had the honor of participating in a Modern Language Association (MlA) panel, convened by Tobin Siebers, titled “Sex and Disability.” As we prepared for our respective talks, querying our colleagues about their favorite writings on the topic, it occurred to Anna: “There should be an an- thology on sex and disability.” Robert, she immediately realized, would be the ideal collaborator for such a project. Many people aided us in making this idea a reality. From the outset, Lennard Davis enthusiastically supported the book. We are also indebted to Elizabeth Abel and Susan Schweik, who offered encour- agement and much valuable advice. The volume benefited immensely from the feedback and critical suggestions of Ellen Samuels and Siobhan Somerville, who each read the entire manuscript, and from Alison Kafer’s smart and incisive comments on an earlier version of the introduction. In 2006 our work on this collection was interrupted by a health crisis in Anna’s life, which left her without housing for several months. For their gener- ous friendship and support during this time, she is deeply grateful to Chris Bell, Gretchen Case, Anne Finger, Alison Kafer, Marilee Nelson, Ellen Samuels, and Josh Weiner. She also thanks her parents, Marie Ashe and Ben Mollow, for their love and support. Nada Mills generously provided bodywork that enabled Anna to write; without her help, this book might not have been completed. Warmest thanks to Robert McRuer for sticking with this project, even when disability- related obstacles threatened to derail it, and for his good humor about the con- siderable effort it took to make our collaboration fully accessible. While a PhD candidate in English at the University of California, Berkeley, Anna was privi- leged to work with many wonderful teachers; she thanks Catherine Gallagher, D. A. Miller, and Kent Puckett for their support. She is particularly grateful to Susan Schweik, who introduced her to disability studies and whose brilliance, intellectual and political rigor, and generosity continue to inspire her. Most especially, Anna extends her heartfelt thanks to her dear friend Jane Herman: for friendship, love, and a home and for the innumerable kind ways in which she supports her writing and political work. Robert is grateful for the ongoing love and support of Joseph Choueike and Tom Murray, which sustains him through every project he undertakes. For this project, he feels particularly fortunate to have worked with Anna Mollow, one of the most amazing editors, writers, and thinkers he knows. Her friendship and support have been invaluable, and he appreciates especially her profoundly femi- nist commitment to pushing him to have difficult conversations about sexuality, gender, disability, and sex that he might otherwise have avoided. His colleagues at the George Washington University have also been incredibly supportive of his individual work, as well as the interdisciplinary work of disability studies more broadly, and Robert particularly wants to acknowledge Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Holly Dugan, Jonathan Gil Harris, Jennifer James, Tony Lopez, Dan Moshen- berg, Rachel Riedner, Gayle Wald, Abby Wilkerson, and Gail Weiss. The members of the Washington, D.C., area queer studies group, DC Queer Studies, which began meeting when this project was just beginning and which continues to thrive, have provided friendship and intellectual support in innumerable ways. Robert also wants to thank Khash Jallaei for bringing so much passion, joy, and laughter to his life during the time this book was being completed. Monica Bland, Judith Jenna, Elizabeth Thompson, Josh Weiner, and Emily White provided top- notch research and secretarial assistance at various stages of this project. Mandy Earley of Duke University Press was a dedicated and em- pathetic supporter of Sex and Disability for most of its history, and we are grateful that she was our associate editor before going on to continue her graduate studies. Jade Brooks and Rebecca Fowler have continued the fine work begun by Mandy, and we are very thankful for their efforts. We heartily thank Ken Wisso- x Acknowledgments ker for his strong commitment to this project from the beginning and for his patience as we have moved it to completion. To our contributors, for hard work, intellectual risk, and patience through the many stages of revision, you have our utmost gratitude and admiration. Finally, two people to whom we are deeply indebted, both personally and intellectually, and whose influence can be felt throughout this book, did not live to see it completed. The passing of Chris Bell and Paul Longmore is an immeasurable loss to disability studies and to the many disability communities that have been sus- tained and inspired by their work. Acknowledgments xi anna Mollow and RobeRt McRueR introduCtion Sex and Disability: the title of this book unites two terms that are, if not anti- thetical in the popular imagination, then certainly incongruous. The assertion that able-bodiedness is the foundation of sexiness might seem self- evident. After all, the sexiest people are healthy, fit, and active: lanky models, buff athletes, trim gym members brimming with energy. Rarely are disabled people regarded as either desiring subjects or objects of desire. And when sex and disability are linked in contemporary American cultures, the conjunction is most often the occasion for marginalization or marveling: the sexuality of disabled people is typically depicted in terms of either tragic deficiency or freakish excess. Pity or fear, in other words, are the sensations most often associated with disabili- ties; more pleasurable sexual sensations are generally dissociated from disabled bodies and lives. But what if disability were sexy? And what if disabled people were understood to be both subjects and objects of a multiplicity of erotic desires and practices? Moreover, what if examining the ways in which these desires and practices are enabled, articulated, and represented in various contexts—contemporary and historical, local and global, public and private—made possible the reconceptual- ization of the categories of both “sex” and “disability”? These are among the ques- tions that Sex and Disability asks. The chapters in this book—in parts focusing on access, histories, spaces, lives, and desires—develop analyses of the myriad ways in which sex and disability, despite their segregation in dominant cultural representations, do in fact come together. aCCeSS “Sexuality,” Anne Finger wrote in 1992, “is often the source of our deepest op- pression; it is also often the source of our deepest pain. It’s easier for us to talk about—and formulate strategies for changing—discrimination in employment, education, and housing than to talk about our exclusion from sexuality and re- production” (9). Reflecting on this observation seventeen years later, Finger suggested to us that sexuality “points to our need for more than rights, for cultural changes—the kind of cultural change we’ve seen in more recent years in the work (writing, painting, performance, dance) of Eli Clare, Terry Galloway, Riva Lehrer, Sins Invalid, Axis Dance Company, etc.”1 The cultural change that Finger notes taking place in memoir, performance, visual art, and dance has also been forwarded by some popular and academic texts, which explicitly ponder either the complex meanings of sexual identity for disabled people or, more directly, as in The Ultimate Guide to Sex and Disability, the many different ways disabled people might—or do—have sex (Kaufman et al.). The journal Sexuality and Disability has been publishing important work by activists, sociologists, anthropologists, and others for many years (including foundational work by Corbett Joan O’Toole, Barbara Faye Waxman- Fiduccia, and Russell Shuttleworth); and in 1996, Tom Shakespeare, Kath Gillespie-Sells, and Dominic Davies published The Sexual Politics of Disability, which—as the subtitle to the book suggested—brought to light many of the hitherto “untold desires” of disabled people.

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