ABSTRACT
This introduction chapter presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book introduces ways in which disabled people are denied access to their sexual lives. It explains key concepts such as ableism, disablism and sexual normalcy. The book overviews the theoretical perspectives that have contributed to existing critical knowledges of disability and sex, but also gender, sexuality, identity, embodiment and subjectivity. It introduces the pertinent politics, practicalities and ethics of telling, hearing and collecting disabled people's sexual stories. The book includes the themes of public life, surveillance, sexual citizenship and privacy as disabled informants' story their management and negotiation of sexual identity in the public sphere. It explores informants' experiences of love and self in current and past intimate relationships with others. The book explores how the sexual pleasures, practices and interactions of disabled informants are shaped by both their 'anomalous embodiment' and dominant discourses of heteronormative sexuality.
