ABSTRACT
When I helped research and write The Sexual Politics of Disability between 1994 and 1996, it was striking that issues of sexuality had a low profile in the British disability movement, and in the developing field of disability studies. It had been suggested by disabled feminists such as Jenny Morris (1993b) that disability studies was reproducing the same old academic problem, of talking about people, when in reality it was relevant only to men. However, we felt that something else was going on. The divide between the public and the private, which feminists had also identified, was the key factor explaining the neglect of issues of sex and identity within disability politics. That is, the public lives of disabled men and women were up for analysis, for discussion, and for campaigning. The demand for an end to discrimination in education, employment, etc. was all about making personal troubles into public issues. But the private lives of disabled women and men were not seen as being equally worthy of concern. It has to be remembered that the social model emerged in the 1970s, when the notion of the personal as political was only just emerging from the women’s movement, and in Britain, where sexual conservatism was the norm.
