Disabled Sex

In this section, four books are looking at sex in the queer disabled body. Desire is a fundamental concept for both queerness and disability as societal structures restrict what desire and sex looks like for non-normative bodies and identities. What is integral to this discussion is the HIV/AIDS epidemic and how that transformed the view of gay bodies and their healthiness. Nicholas Hrynyk published an article in 2021 titled "No Sorrow, No Pity": Intersections of Disability, HIV/AIDS, and Gay Male Masculinity in the 1980s which examines what it says on the tin - the intersection of disability and the AIDS crisis. Hrynyk writes about “narratives around disease and disability demonstrate how perceptions of bodily "failure" transferred from the disabled body onto the diseased body during the formative years of the HIV/AIDS epidemic”.

The HIV/AIDS epidemic deeply affected and continues to affect the queer community and how sex, masculinity, and bodies are talked about - especially regarding narratives around gay male masculinity being entrenched in activity, virality, and health. HIV/AIDS affects the body, physically disabling it, and labeling the body as diseased. Those affected by HIV/AIDS were shamed by many communities, the disability community being no exception, as the epidemic was written off as a consequence of queer lifestyle imposed on healthy able-bodied white gay men. This narrative largely neglects racialized and disabled bodies, especially when these communities were already left out of conversations on discussion of desire. 

Alan Santinele Martino wrote an article in 2025 titled “Toward a “crip” sociology of fucking” that looks at the concept of “crip” sociology and challenging dominant narratives of sex and sexuality, placing disabled bodies at the forefront. Martino critiques the framework of ableist society and how it views sex and desire - instead Martino unearths the instances of disabled individuals unapologetically expressing their desires and sexual acts.

Queer disability’s exploration of desire is largely focused on the body and misconceptions of how the body functions in sexual encounters. HIV/AIDS stigma influences this and intertwines itself with this desire to be desired and see the body as whole, inseparable from its conditions and wanted within that.

• Perspectives on AIDS: Ethical and Social Issues (1991) edited by Christine Overall and William Basil Zion. This text is an academic text, aimed for university level philosophy and religious studies as it applies to moral issues, ethics, sexual ethics and biomedical ethics. There’s a chapter labeled “AIDS and Disability” by Jerome E. Bickenbach that explores the aforementioned intersection. 

• Forget Burial: HIV Kinship, Disability, and Queer/Trans Narratives of Care (2020) by Marty Fink  looks at queer and trans people in the 1980s to 90s and how the government failed to care for the suffering queer population. It describes the coming together of lovers, strangers, artists, and community activists to take care of each other. It is the marrying of HIV care-giving activism and contemporary disability movements - all looking at systems of care and imagined futures. 

• Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice (2018) by Leak Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is a collection of essays that explores the politics and realities of disabled justice and the centre's disabled leadership of queer, trans, Black and brown folks. They use their own experiences and knowledge as an activist and lived experience as a queer femme to inform their insight on the economics of queer femme emotional labour, suicide in queer and trans communities, and living as a sick and disabled queer artists of colour. Piepzna-Samarasinha views access not as a chore, but as collective responsibility and pleasure. 

• Ultimate Guide to Sex and Disability: For All of Us Who Live with Disabilities, Chronic Pain, and Illness (2007) by Miriam Kaufman, Cory Silverberg, and Fran Odette is a sex guide for all those who live with disabilities, pain, illness and chronic conditions. This collection is from the perspective of a medical doctor, sex educator, and disability activists - positioned to build positive sexual self-image, minimize stress and maximize pleasure, dealing with fatigue and pain, talking about sex, adapting sex toys, and the process of finding partners.

When bodies are seen as undesirable, there is a disconnect on what sex could possibly look like and the fact that it is happening. Both queer people and disabled people are questioned for how they have sex, why they have sex, and have their desires demonized, stigmatized, and interrogated.