Masculinity, Disability, and Access-Ability: Ethnography as Alternative Practice in the Study of Disabled Sexualities

Abstract

Much disability scholarship glosses over sexuality, a necessary concern in understanding disability. Considerations of disability and sexuality are critical in considering therapeutic benefits of disabled sport, as traditional notions of sexuality have strong links to sport participation. Examining such interplays, however, requires multiple ethnographic approaches, especially when the researcher is able-bodied. Drawing on over 100 hours of fieldwork, interviews with disabled athletes, and personal narrative, this piece consists of two narrative streams regarding how performances of wheelchair rugby athletes construct disabled sexualities within the context of sport participation. In one stream, I present my discovery of sexualities in my childhood, coming of age with a father who was disabled, which is blended with the second, my analysis of players' social talk. Together, these streams address issues that permeate the cultural narratives of heteronormative (dis)abled sexualities, gender, and disability.