Sexy Like Us

Abstract

This book explores the nexus of disability, humor, and sexuality. Based on personal interviews, online ethnographies, and analyses of comedy and theater performances, the book argues that people in disability communities employ joking to shape political disability identities and pride. Joking calls attention to social inequalities, pokes back at ableist cultural norms, and offers new perspectives on disabled bodies through revealing the many ways that disability is a construction. Jokes can be read in a myriad of ways, so the ambivalent nature of comedy has led to debates within disability communities about when it is acceptable to joke, who has permission, and which jokes should be used inside and outside a community's inner circle. The text also explores how humor can be used for harmful or emancipatory purposes, since jokes may be employed to reflect horizontal hostilities and evoke hierarchies within disability communities. Joking may be difficult when we consider aspects of disability that involve physical or emotional pain, struggles to adapt to new forms of embodiment, and ways that intersectional identities affect how people with disabilities are interpreted in mainstream and disability cultures. The book also interrogates how joking can be used to experiment with the possibilities of embodiment and sexual practice. Through joking, people with disabilities can expand the definitions of disability and sexuality, and help others with disabilities assert themselves as sexual. Adding humor to these conversations opens ways of being not only for individuals who consider themselves disabled, but for all people.