"What's it like to be a lesbian with a cane?": A Story and Study of Queer and Disabled Identities

People with disabilities are largely conceptualized as asexual; this systematically excludes disabled people from achieving agency in their sexual landscape. Drawing from interview data on the sexual lives of nine queer people living with disabilities, this project explores the lived experiences of physically disabled queer people as they relate to sexuality, sexual identity, intimacy, and the sexual body. Queer people with physical disabilities navigate identity, community, various sexual fields while also challenging misconceptions about these marginal identities. Excerpts and analysis of these interviews reveal the various strategies that queer and disabled people utilize in order to make their identities legible in the face of numerous assumptions about their experiences. Illuminating the voices of queer and disabled people, this thesis offers an important intervention to the sociological study of sexualities, gender expression, and disability, which too frequently marginalizes the voices of people who are queer and disabled.