TY - CHAP
T1 - Breaking the silence: Disability and sexuality in contemporary Bulgaria
AU - Mladenov, T.
PY - 2013
Y1 - 2013
N2 - This paper explores the silence surrounding disabled people’s sexuality in contemporary, postsocialist Bulgaria. The related desexualisation of disabled people is regarded as an instance of disablism that is sustained through medicalisation, patriarchal stereotypes and negative understandings of the bodily difference of ‘impairment’. The analysis draws on disability studies and phenomenology in order to elicit the workings of these mechanisms in everyday discourse as represented by an autobiographical essay and an internet discussion. A number of strategies for challenging disablist desexualisation are also highlighted whose point of departure is breaking the silence on the topic of disabled people’s sexuality.
AB - This paper explores the silence surrounding disabled people’s sexuality in contemporary, postsocialist Bulgaria. The related desexualisation of disabled people is regarded as an instance of disablism that is sustained through medicalisation, patriarchal stereotypes and negative understandings of the bodily difference of ‘impairment’. The analysis draws on disability studies and phenomenology in order to elicit the workings of these mechanisms in everyday discourse as represented by an autobiographical essay and an internet discussion. A number of strategies for challenging disablist desexualisation are also highlighted whose point of departure is breaking the silence on the topic of disabled people’s sexuality.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-84920856238&partnerID=MN8TOARS
U2 - 10.4324/9781315866932
DO - 10.4324/9781315866932
M3 - Chapter (peer-reviewed)
SN - 9780415610964
T3 - BASEES/Routledge Series on Russian and East European Studies
SP - 141
EP - 164
BT - Disability in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union
A2 - Rasell, Michael
A2 - Iarskaia-Smirnova, Elena
PB - Routledge Taylor & Francis Group
ER -