Reflections on the Process of Researching Disabled People's Sexual Lives

Abstract

This article offers a reflexive account of the processes, politics, problems, practicalities and pleasures of storying disabled people's sexual lives for the purposes of sociological research. Drawing upon a doctoral study which explored disabled people's lived experiences of sex, intimacy and sexuality through their own sexual stories, the author considers how her identity, subjectivity and embodiment – in this case, a white, British, young, heterosexual, disabled, cisgendered woman with congenital and (dependent upon the context) visible impairment – was interwoven within and through the research methodology; most explicitly, as an interlocutor and co-constructor of informants’ sexual stories. Given the paucity of reflexive research in this area, a number of reflexive dilemmas are identified which make important methodological contributions to qualitative sociology, disability studies scholarship and research, and current knowledges of the emotional work of qualitative researchers (Dickinson-Smith et al. 2009).