Part of: Digital Queerness
Abstract:
What knowledges are shared by neuroqueer individuals in their online communities in relation to their sex lives, and how can they inform an understanding of neurodiverse people and their sexual practices? To research sex in its facilitation, sex outside of heteronormative relationships, and lived experience without objectifying and infantilizing the disabled subject was, and in large part still is, under-researched and taboo. Nearly absent in early research, popular culture also invisiblized disabled people, especially from forms of intimacy, deeming disabled bodies as either “untouchable” or “supercrips” (Serlin, 2012, p. 146) who served as sources of inspiration for able bodied counterparts. Disability or neurodivergence is not always recognized as a site for creative potentials (Walker, 2021), especially for sexual practices without medical interventions or theorizing. Rather, the literature tends to incorporate these experiences into discourses of sexual healthism in which the individual is personally responsible for optimizing their bodies, minds, and health to be able to access enjoyable sexual experiences, molding individuals into heteronormative scripts for sex, partnerships, and pleasure (Epstein & Mamo, 2017). While academia may have a significant gap in the discussion of sex within the context of neurodisability, neurodiverse communities thrive online in advice sharing, community formation, and frank discussions of their sexual lives. Little research has been conducted on how these communities approach advice-sharing, forming connections, and how these communities are uniquely important to those who participate.
Guided by a vignette compiled from Reddit posts, this paper is a scoping review of neurodivergence and embodied sexual experiences for neurodivergent and disabled people as well as a proposal for future work. To set the structure for my analysis of discourse regarding neurodivergence and sex in online communities, I bring together sexual healthism (Epstein & Mamo, 2017), neuroqueer theory (Walker, 2021), and disability justice (Piepzna-Samarasinha, 2019), uniquely approaching Reddit online communities to uplift knowledges and care networks shared in neurodivergent posts regarding sex and sexuality. Each post, and its associated comments, demonstrates threads that explode with empathetic agreement, challenges, overwhelm, needs, and a unique type of belonging and kin networks. Posts revealed a discourse that builds on contemporary disability work, goes beyond medical framings of disability and sex, and presents an embodied approach to sex and disability that breaks heteronormative narratives. I share aspects of this compellation of threads to highlight the types of questions that arise online when anonymity is allowed, as well as the resourcing and connection that occurs within neurodivergent community. Discussing the embodied experiences of neurodivergent people and sex as the communities discuss it will uniquely expand on disability and crip studies, while also attending to these communities as acts of radical disability justice through care networks (Piepzna-Samarasinha, 2019). This work aims to shift discourses in disability and crip studies back to the materiality of the disabled bodymind. Ultimately, the goal of this research is to produce work by and for neurodivergent individuals as they navigate sexual experiences with self and partner, raising the knowledges created online as authoritative experiences of neurodivergent people.
