On Thursday 28th March, Dr Kirsty Liddiard, School of Education and iHuman, appeared on Al Jazeera’s global TV show, The Stream. The programme focused on debates around disability and sexuality, exploring the ways in which mainstream ableist cultures of perfection, body idealism and narrow perspectives of sexuality, desire and eroticism shape the sexual and intimate lives of disabled people.
Kirsty talked briefly about her recently published book, The Intimate Lives of Disabled People (2018), and drew upon the stories of disabled young people collected as part of Living Life to the Fullest, an ESRC-funded transdisciplinary arts-informed project co-led by Kirsty, Katherine Runswick-Cole and Dan Goodley (both School of Education and iHuman) and the Co-Researcher Collective, a group of disabled young people co-leading the project.
Kirsty reiterated disabled young people’s calls for better and more relevant sex education; safe/r spaces in which to talk about sex and love and seek sexual support; the often deep-rooted feelings of shame for wanting sex and love as a disabled young person; and the confining nature of unhelpful media representations of disabled people as undesirable and unlovable. Ultimately, in their Living Life to the Fullest stories, disabled young people are strongly emphasising how they want their sexualities acknowledged by others around them and those who support them.
You can watch the show on YouTube here (Kirsty features at 21.20 minutes in).
To learn more about Living Life to the Fullest, follow the blog here and follow the project on Twitter at @FullLivesESRC
