Exploring Sexuality and Disability: A Guide for Human Service Professionals

Offering a current, comprehensive, and intersectional guide for students, practitioners, and researchers, this book synthesizes existing scholarship on culturally responsive practices that assist in exploring, understanding, and affirming the sexuality(ies) of disabled, chronically ill, neurodivergent, and Mad individuals.

Drawing on an intersectional framework, it integrates insights drawn from an interdisciplinary body of scholarship including psychology, social work, sociology, history, political science, women and gender studies, cultural studies, and education along with perspectives from the practitioners who are actively defining the next generation of best practices.

By highlighting the incredible resilience and resistance of disabled individuals’ and communities’ sexuality and sexual well-being, this book challenges narratives that rely primarily on a one-dimensional view derived from the medical model and the view of disability as something to be “fixed” – or at least tolerated – rather than celebrated. In a world that pathologizes and devalues the sexual existence of disabled individuals, it illustrates how to create thriving communities and relationships, and how they can organize to find their voice, providing a counter-narrative of empowerment that fosters hopefulness, power, and health.

It will be of interest to all scholars, students, and professionals across a variety of professions, including social work, psychology, counseling, policy, healthcare, education, community organizing, and multiple social service settings.

Shanna Katz Kattari, PhD, MEd, CSE, is a certified sexuality educator, an associate professor at the University of Michigan School of Social Work and Department of Women’s and Gender Studies, and the director of the [Sexuality | Relationships | Gender] Research Collective. Their work focuses on disability and ableism; sexuality and sexual health; and queer- and trans-affirming care. Find out more about their work at ShannaKattari.com.