Search Results

This chapter looks at Peter's landmark contribution to the sociological understanding of disability and, through his campaigning, to the acceptance of disability rights as a focus for social policy and grass-roots campaigning. It examines the paradox of why someone who shared so many of its values and influenced many of its ideas is not celebrated in the academic discipline of disability studies. It assesses the extent to which the campaign for disability rights has been successful (not least through equality legislation and improved benefits). It observes that however, the Disability Studies movement feels that this has been at the expense of the cause itself, which has been usurped by the professionalisation of disability rights. It finally considers recent research that confirms the messages behind the Disability Alliance campaign for a disability income, that, in the 21st century, families who experience disability are more likely to be poor and disability is more often found in poor families.

Introduces the central features of the book: a concentration of critical disability studies and posthuman theory; questions of embodiment and technology; the focus on twenty- and twenty-first- century literatures and twenty-first-century film. The introduction also outlines the contents of the chapters and has a particular focus on the writings of L. Frank Baum, especially The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

As enacted in the twenty-first century study of children’s and adolescent literature, Disability Studies, feminist narrative theory, and feminist reader response theory emphasize material aspects of caring, relationality, and cooperation. This chapter discusses Marissa Meyer’s Cinder in terms of caring and Disability Studies. Narrative layering also helps authors interrogate levels of care, so the remaining novels in this chapter include embedded narratives that help the protagonist grow in her ethics of care. To explore how feminist narrative theories of children’s and adolescent literature are imbued with ethics of care, the chapter provides readings of Jennifer Donnelly’s Revolution and Kate DiCamillo’s Flora & Ulysses. In the final section, to interrogate feminist reader response theory in the YA novel as a function of ethics of care, the chapter examines Linda Sue Park’s Project Mulberry.

The introduction provides examples of persons with disabilities and their respective sexual encounters. The issues discussed should provoke discussion about what we think about intellectual disability, what it means to be sexual, and how all types of individuals can express their sexuality without fear of reprisal and oversight. This work addresses intellectual disability and sexuality, but also attends to larger issues around sexuality for all individuals, regardless of intellectual ability or diagnosis. Sexual ableism as a theory articulates how different types of bodies, regardless of labels of intellectual disability, experience oversight and regulation of sexual and reproductive behaviors.

The strength of this chapter lies in an examination of pity and competence as thoroughly unhelpful constructs that perceive individuals who experience sexual abuse as deserving of pity and unable to consent to sexual activities. The chapter deconstructs the complicated notions of competence and assessments of competence as denying individuals legal recognition of their capacity for sexual expression.

This chapter analyzes the representation of disability in two films from a Disability Studies perspective: Yo, también (2009, Antonio Pastor and Álvaro Naharro) and León y Olvido (2004, Xavier Bermúdez). Both films feature characters with disabilities played by actors with Down syndrome Pablo Pineda in Yo, también and Guillem Jiménez in León y Olvido. Despite each film's many successes, contrast between the two hinges on issues of autonomy, inclusion, rights, filmic representation and the notion of Disability Studies as a political project.

I explore a long history of masturbation training in the field of intellectual disability as one of the ways that individuals are taught to be sexual, effectively making expressions of sexuality a solitary act seen to reduce behavioral issues in the group home and institution. I argue in this chapter that the discourse around masturbation reveals the ways in which the sexuality of certain populations continues to be regulated as deviant and dangerous as well as inappropriate to reproduce.

This chapter investigates a recent court case in Illinois where a young adult woman with an intellectual disability petitioned the court to stop an involuntary sterilization procedure. The court ruled that permanent sterilization would cause psychological damage to the young woman even though the court was convinced she did not have the capacity to parent. Activists emboldened by the court case petitioned the State Legislature and Governor to pass a law preventing involuntary sterilization.

Sex education materials are prescriptive (or normalizing) in their sanctioned approach of sexuality for people with intellectual disabilities, even though individuals express their sexuality in ways that are not the “approved” or “sanctioned.” These sex education materials adopt what I call a “harm reduction” approach to sexuality. The almost totalizing focus on reducing harms can distract from equally compelling efforts to equip individuals with sexual knowledge that can facilitate obtaining pleasure and satisfaction from sexuality.

This chapter explores the ways in which reproductive capabilities of women with intellectual disabilities are understood and represented while remaining mindful of the discourses of control lodged at a multiplicity of women’s bodies. In addition, the coalitional potential between reproductive justice and disability rights is discussed.

Characters with intellectual disabilities largely act as metaphors to facilitate unification of heterosexual family units. A character often symbolizes constructs of love, devotion, and family to others. An individual’s sexual agency is secondary to their ability to inspire their family members and friends to overcome their own personal crises and conflicts.

This essay suggests how literary theory can help students confront the textual complexity and subtlety of Welty’s short stories, and how the stories, in turn, can offer a range of questions and problems for reexamination as they highlight the blind spots of various theoretical “lenses.” Students begin with the formalist method of “close reading” and Welty’s “A Piece of News,” followed by theories of gender and sexuality paired with “A Curtain of Green,” and “Petrified Man” and end up with disability studies as illustrated in Welty’s first short story collection. The essay shows with examples from Welty’s work the intersections where theory meets practical criticism and where fiction articulates positions that help students understand theory in turn.

When we assume to know what is best for others, this knowledge can often actively hide or deny individual sexual self-determination. The challenge is to continue to forward sexual pleasure and desire in sex education materials, to continue partnerships with disability justice and reproductive justice, to advocate for and believe in coalitions that enable equitable and accessible futures.

Through an examination of the experiences of Castillar Lupe dy Cazaril, protagonist of Lois McMaster Bujold’s The Curse of Chalion, this chapter argues that the novel mirrors academic and advocacy agendas on the topics of passing, sexuality, and care, while ultimately relating to emerging perspectives from queer disability studies critiques of normalcy. The chapter engages with The Curse of Chalion as a text that illustrates and contributes to theoretical and activist work on disability in relation to vulnerability and cure, through the multiple meanings of Cazaril’s ‘holy pain’. The chapter shows how, in its overarching concern with embodiment through Cazaril’s physical suffering, fatigue, chronic illness, and rehabilitation, Bujold’s speculative narrative aligns with recent disability studies and disability justice frameworks that hold space for multiple, nuanced perspectives on these issues, inviting examination of the connections between the bodily and social dimensions of disability.

This chapter discusses an episode of the Internet reality television series The Specials, where a young-adult man with an intellectual disability expresses sexual desire for a group of Thai kathoey performers, The Lady Boys of Bangkok. I argue that intellectually disabled sexuality challenges sexually ableist, heteronormative understandings of sexuality.

This chapter questions what it means to ‘perform’ sickness and disability, and in particular, how common perceptions of the two may be revealed in their cinematic reiteration. Analysing Javier Bardem as emblematic of a whole branch of Spanish acting expertise, the chapter discusses the appearance of disability and illness in Mar adentro/The Sea Inside (Alejandro Amenábar, 2004) and Biutiful (Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2010). Rather than assume that illness and disability are already understood phenomena, the chapter instead argues that their threat is kept at bay, that the performance of the two serves to reify the importance of the healthy body. Bardem, for this reason, is emblematic, as his physicality has long been praised and admired in Spanish cinema. For that reason, the chapter concludes, acting choices, cinematic styles, and the artificiality imposed by the camera keep illness and disability at arm’s length, constantly eluding audiences and actors alike.

Eugenics, or the prenatal selection of human beings, comprises two different types: the old eugenics, based on coercive measures; and the new (or liberal) eugenics, based on individual choices. The main objective of eugenics, however, has never changed since its birth at the end of the 19^th century. Disability studies address social environments that urge such selection (or exclusion) of people with disabilities, and claim social reform rather than disseminating the new technology of eugenics. On the other hand, victims of the old eugenics must be compensated, as their human rights were violated. This is especially true for the Japanese society, in which non-voluntary sterilization was practiced primarily in the 1950s and 60s.

This chapter provides an introduction to the topic of human rights and dementia. It briefly traces the history of the human rights movement and discusses the significance of the UN Declaration on Human Rights (1948) and how the latter has helped shape other human rights treaties including the UN Convention on the rights of people with disabilities. The latter is a tool which will be used as a compass for analysis throughout the book. The chapter differentiates between human rights and human needs. It critically reviews negative and positive rights in the context of people living with dementia and describes the three generation of rights all people possess by virtue of being human. It argues for the application of a rights based framework to be used by practitioners in dementia care and points to the usefulness of using a social justice /rights based lens to interrogate dementia, extend the contemporary debate and ultimately attempt to improve quality of life and quality of care for all those living with dementia. The main aim of the book, the critical perspectives informing it and some of its distinctive features are highlighted.