Call for full sexual citizenship for people with disabilities

In the most recent issue of Sexuality Research and Social Policy: Journal of NSRC (SRSP), Margrit Shildrick argues in her article, "Contested Pleasures: The Sociopolitical Economy of Disability and Sexuality," that sexual pleasure among people with disabilties challenges "a cultural imaginary that fears nonnormative sexuality as being a potential point of societal
breakdown."

Shildrick goes on to demonstrate how social policy has reinforced this view by emphasizing rehabilitation and compensation, and not sexual embodiment, for persons with disability. She states that even the disability rights movement has largely ignored sexual pleasure and desire and she concludes with a call for the full sexual citizenship of people with disabilities.

Shidlrick's strong analysis is part of a special issue of SRSP on sexuality and disability guest edited by Russell Shuttelworth that ranges from an examination of the disabled performance artist Bob Flanigan's celebration of the practice of BDSM as a mode of empowerment to studies of the sexual needs of LGBT disabled people. Go here to see the table of contents for this new journal issue.