‘From alliance to trust’: constructing Crip-Queer intimacies

Abstract

Yes, we fuck! (2015) is a documentary that seeks to portray the sexuality of people with functional diversity that focuses on their empowerment and critiques ableism. Its filming has helped to generate alliances between Spanish activist groups, which have been named Alianzas Tullido-Transfeministas (Crip-Queer Alliances). Based on a research project that combined traditional and digital ethnography, this article reflects on how these crip-queer alliances have been constructed. First, we present a genealogy that contextualizes key events and explains their origins. Second, we analyse the construction process of the alliances, from queer to crip and vice versa, in order to reflect on the notions of intimacy that these alliances mobilize, while analysing their discourses and performances around the body, bonding, desire and sexuality. Finally, we explain the potential, as well as the difficulties and challenges, of these alliances. We conclude that they have followed their own situated process, where activists bring into play their bodies, emotions and intimacies and thus generate enormous potential for political action that questions ableism and heteropatriarchy.

Keywords:

• Disability
• crip
• queer
• gender
• sexuality
• activism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Andrea García-Santesmases Fernández studied Sociology at the Charles III University of Madrid and Social and Cultural Anthropology at the Complutense University of Madrid. She holds a Master in Sociological Research from the University of Barcelona. Currently, she is finishing her PhD in Sociology at the University of Barcelona studying the construction of gender identity in people with physical disability. She was a visiting researcher at the University of Amsterdam in collaboration with LOVA Netherlands Association for Gender Studies and Feminist Anthropology and at the University of Lisbon in collaboration with the Disability and Human Rights Observatory (ODDH). She is member of the International and Inter-University research group: Copolis ‘Welfare, community and social control’. Her main lines of research are: disability, gender, body and sexuality

Núria Vergés Bosch is a Postdoctoral Researcher and Professor at the Department of Sociology and Organizational Analysis of the University of Barcelona. She studied Political Sciences at the UAB, holds a Master in Public and Social Policies from the UPF and the John Hopkins University and has a Phd in Information and Knowledge Society from the IN3-UOC. She was a visiting researcher at the CGWS Trinity College Dublin and at the University of Konstanz. She is a member of the Interuniversity Institute of Women and Gender Studies of Catalonia, member of the Copolis Research Group at the UB, as well as a collaborator of the GENTIC Research Group at the IN3(UOC). She is cofounder of the Donestech Collective about women and Technologies and member of ALIA, the association for women’s research and action.

Elisabet Almeda Samaranch is a professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Barcelona in Spain. She is the director of Group Copolis and holds a PhD in Sociology from the Autonomous University of Barcelona and a Master’s in Social Welfare and Social Planning from the University of Kent in Canterbury. She also holds a degree in Economics and Business from the University of Barcelona. Her research and teaching has developed in three main areas: systems of criminal justice (social control, female criminality and women’s prisons), changes and family policies (one-parent famílies and comparative family policy), and memory and identity.