Feeling Comfortable Together: Doing and Imagining Gender with Personal Support

Humphrey, H. , Coleman-Fountain, E. and Toft, A. (2023) Feeling Comfortable Together: Doing and Imagining Gender with Personal Support. British Sociological Association Annual Conference 2023, Manchester, UK, 12-14 Apr 2023.

Abstract

This paper will explore the contribution of personal assistance to disabled young adults’ doing and imagining of gender as part of their personal life. We draw on data from a study that looked at the decisions young disabled adults make about their support, and the relevance of gender and sexuality to those decisions. Following interviews with twelve young disabled adults, who had a range of gender and sexual identities, we undertook creative work, with the support of an advisory group of young disabled adults, to look at how to represent, through creative but usable resources, how gender matters for the choices and decisions young disabled adults make about their personal support. This includes how genders and imagined genders of their PAs matters to these experiences of “feeling comfortable together”. This paper will explore how accommodations made to ‘feeling comfortable together’ in different support contexts, shaped the doings and imaginings of gender in these contexts, and how we explored these through ‘co-creating’ creative resources designed to facilitate discussions about gender between PAs and young employers of PAs. ‘Feeling comfortable together’ emerged as a criteria and focus for the decisions the young people made or anticipated making about their support, and was indexed to interactions between gendered bodies in personal life support linked to personal care, clothing and dress, household arrangements, and intimate relationships.

• Item Type: Conference or Workshop Item
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Humphrey, Dr Harvey
• Authors: Humphrey, H., Coleman-Fountain, E., and Toft, A.
• Subjects: H Social Sciences > HM Sociology
• College/School: College of Social Sciences > School of Social and Political Sciences > Sociology Anthropology and Applied Social Sciences

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