The Intersection of Sexual Agency and Political Agency - Disability and "Sins Invalid"
During Week Eight of Transnational Sexualities, we spent some time reading and discussing the intersection of sexuality and disability. One of our authors for this week, Abby Wilkerson, argued that "sexual agency is central to political agency, and that a group’s experience of sexually-based harms and constraints on sexual agency should be recognized as a hallmark of oppression" (Wilkerson 33). Another article we read for this week, titled "Disability, Sexuality, and Sexual Health" by Poul Rohleder and Leslie Swarts, argued that "Participation by people with disabilities themselves in debates about sexuality and sexual rights has been key to changing views on their sexuality. It remains the case though that mainstream discussions about sexual rights commonly ignore or sideline issues of sexuality in these groups. It is essential therefore for issues of sexuality for disabled people to become part of more general debates about sexuality" (Rohleder 148).
In order to further engage with these concepts of political agency and sexual agency, while also highlighting and prioritizing the role of people with disabilities in the conversation, I would suggest the film Sins Invalid. I actually viewed this film in a different Queer Studies course this term (QS 462 - Queer Theories). Here is a short description of the documentary from the film website:
"Sins Invalid is a performance project on disability and sexuality that incubates and celebrates artists with disabilities, centralizing artists of color and queer and gender-variant artists as communities who have been historically marginalized from social discourse."
You can view the trailer for Sins Invalid below:
You can view the film in full at the following link:
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