Citation: Das, A (2016) Disabilities and Sexualities: Exploring Intersections and Multiplicities. Graduate Journal of Social Science, 12 (1). ISSN 1572-3763 Link to Leeds Beckett Repository record: https://eprints.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/id/eprint/3508/ Document Version: Article (Published Version) Creative Commons: Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 The aim of the Leeds Beckett Repository is to provide open access to our research, as required by funder policies and permitted by publishers and copyright law. The Leeds Beckett repository holds a wide range of publications, each of which has been checked for copyright and the relevant embargo period has been applied by the Research Services team. We operate on a standard take-down policy. If you are the author or publisher of an output and you would like it removed from the repository, please contact us and we will investigate on a case-by-case basis. 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Sexualities & Disabilities Graduate Journal of Social GJSS Science Volume 12, Issue 1 – February 2016 http://gjss.org Graduate Journal of Social GJSS Science Graduate Journal of Social Science February 2016, Volume 12, Issue 1 Editors: Arpita Das, The Asian-Pacific Resource & Research Centre for Women Remi Joseph-Salisbury, Centre for Ethnicity and Racism Studies, University of Leeds, UK [email protected] Copy Editor: Nadia Hai, Carleton University, Canada Web Editor: Michael En, University of Vienna, Austria Layout & Design Editor: Boka En, University of Vienna, Austria Cover Image: Matt Olson Photography – http://www.gomattolsonphotography.com The Graduate Journal of Social Science (ISSN: 1572-3763) is an open-access online journal focusing on methodological and theoretical issues of interdisciplinary rele- vance. The journal publishes two issues per year, one of which is thematic and one of which groups innovative and instructive papers from all disciplines. GJSS welcomes submissions from both senior and junior academics, thus providing a forum of publica- tion and exchange among different generations engaged in interdisciplinary research. GJSS is published by EBSCO publishing. For subscription inquiries, requests, and changes, please contact [email protected]. All the content and downloads are published under the Creative Commons Attribution- NoDerivs 3.0 license. Contents Contributors ......................................................................................................................................4 Editorial Arpita Das & Remi Joseph-Salisbury ...........................................................................................6 Articles Transforming Cultures of (Un)Desirability: Creating Cultures of Resistance. Loree Erickson .............................................................................................................................. 11 Disabling Sexualities: Embodiments of a Colonial Past Omolola A. Ladele ....................................................................................................................... 23 Fighting Pain with Pain: Bob Flanagan/Sheree Rose and Catherine Opie Alessandra Mondin ..................................................................................................................... 40 Of love, fears and dreams: Narratives of wives of soldiers disabled in war Shyamani Hettirarachchi ........................................................................................................... 66 Understanding and Exploring the Effects of Informal Care on the Sexual Self: A Disability Perspective Andrea McCarthy ......................................................................................................................... 96 Love, sex, disability, coming out and John Travolta in New York and Jerusalem: A twenty-year journey Scott Sheidlower ....................................................................................................................... 118 Reviews HabibAzar. 2010. Armless. Wannabe people and the desirability of the disabled body: A film review by Andrea García-Santesmases ................................................................................................... 125 Haritaworn, Jin, Kunstman, Adi, & Posocco, Silvia, eds. 2014. Queer Necropolitics. Abingdon/Oxon: Routledge. Neoliberalism and regimes of Life and Death: A Book Review by Heather Tucker .......................................................................................................................... 130 4 GJSS Vol. 12, Issue 1 Contributors Dr. Loree Erickson is a white, queer, femmegimp porn star academic. Based in To- ronto, she is the creator of want, an internationally award-winning porn film, and a community organizer. She loves travelling to lecture, making queercrip porn, and facilitating workshops/lecturing on a variety of topics including collective care, disability justice/radical disability politics, and all things related to sex and disabil- ity. She is also a fan of sun, sparkly things, and social justice. Andrea García-Santesmases is a sociologist and anthropologist. She is currently working on a PhD in Sociology at the University of Barcelona about the construc- tion of gender identity in people with physical disability. She is a member of CO- POLIS, an international and interuniversity research group of gender and social control. Shyamani Hettiarachchi is attached to the Department of Disability Studies, Fac- ulty of Medicine at the University of Kelaniya in Sri Lanka. She is an Adjunct Lec- turer at School of Psychology and Speech Pathology, Faculty of Health Sciences, Curtin University, Australia. She works both as a Speech and Language Therapist and Dramatherapist in Sri Lanka. Her research interests include phonological dis- orders in children, dysphagia and gender and disability. Omolola A Ladele holds a PhD in English. She is currently a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English, Lagos State University Ojoo, Lagos, Nigeria where she teaches several graduate and undergraduate level courses including, Postcolonial literature, Women and Gender Studies, Feminist Literature, Literary theory. She has presented papers in international and local conferences and these have ap- peared in peer-reviewed local and international journals. Andrea McCarthy obtained a BA in Sociology and Cultural Studies from the Uni- versity of Sussex and an MSc in Social Research Methods at the University of Sur- rey. Prior to starting her MSc, Andrea worked within the charity sector, undertak- ing research in the fields of disability, education and the experiences of the care Contributors 5 system for children and young people. Her research interests include sexuality, disability and the impact of informal care on both caregivers and the people re- ceiving care. Andrea is particularly interested in the use of emancipatory research techniques in order to promote inclusive and empowering social research for peo- ple with disabilities. Alessandra Mondin holds a BA in Visual Arts (DAMS - Bologna University) and an Erasmus Mundus MA in Women’s and Gender Studies (GEMMA - University of Hull and Utrecht University). She is completing her PhD at the Centre for Research in Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Sunderland. Her doctoral research focuses on feminist pornographies and the aesthetics, ethics and politics of fem- inist desires. Heather Tucker is a PhD research student in the Comparative Gender Studies de- partment at Central European University in Budapest. Formerly working as an advocate in the field of intimate partner violence in the U.S.,she has conducted research which focuses on a queer feminist analysis of identity, body politics, and NGO formation within post colonial settings. She is currently carrying out her PhD research project in Accra, Ghana which focuses on body politics, intimacy, and NGOization. Scott Sheidlower is an Associate Professor and head of circulation and the ar- chivist in the library at York College of the City University of New York [CUNY] in Jamaica, Queens, New York City. He has an M.A. in Art History from NYU; an M.A. in Arts Administration, also from NYU; and an M.L.S. from Queens College/CUNY. He is co-author of Humor and Information Literacy: Practical Techniques for Library Instruction (Libraries Unlimited, 2011). He is working on a second book also to be published by Libraries Unlimited. His e-mail is [email protected]. Editorial Arpita Das & Remi Joseph-Salisbury Within discourses of sexuality, people with disabilities and their sexual desires are often marginalised; at the same time, sexuality hardly appears as a matter of significance for people with disabilities. Too often, the sexual and reproductive needs, desires, and concerns of people with disabilities remain ignored. People with disabilities are often perceived as ‘hypersexual’ beings needing to be con- trolled or, as ‘asexual’ without any sexual and reproductive needs. This journal issue attempts to address these under-represented and marginal- ised voices and aims to advance scholarship at the intersections of disability and sexuality. It has not been an easy process to reach out to scholars and academics for papers for this issue and as editors, we have had to extend the deadline twice in order to be