Self-fashioning Queer/Crip: Stretching and grappling with disability, gender and dress

Abstract

The convergence of queer studies with disability studies has imagined new possibilities of sexuality, gender and the body, and developed Queer/Crip as a theoretical framework. Queer/Crip scholars map out connections between queer and crip theories by examining how compulsory heterosexuality and compulsory able-bodiedness are entangled in the service of normativity. This article uses a Queer/Crip framework to explore how queer, disabled people use their everyday dress practices to construct their intersectional identities, as well as to stretch and navigate dominant systems of gender, sexuality and disability. Drawing from wardrobe interviews with 40 disability-identified men and masculine non-binary people, we present sartorial biographies of four queer, disabled participants from this larger sample. These participants come from diverse locations of both marginalization and privilege across races, gender identities, classes, disability embodiments and other social positions. Our analysis reveals that queer, disabled participants’ everyday dress practices dismantle dominant systems of gender, disability and fashion. However, participants also grapple with self-fashioning their disabled and queer identities based on the various ways in which they are intersectionally privileged and marginalized. This article contributes to research on queer fashion by demonstrating how applying a Queer/Crip framework and centring disability dress experiences opens-up understandings about queer embodiment and dress.