LGBTQ+ People with Chronic Illness

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiii

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Mara Pieri

   Pages 1-11

3. A Queer-Crip Perspective on Chronic Illness

   • Mara Pieri

   Pages 13-41

4. LGBTQ+ Rights and Access to Healthcare in Italy and Portugal

   • Mara Pieri

   Pages 43-58

5. Intimacy and Sexuality: Weaving Significant Relationships

   • Mara Pieri

   Pages 59-84

6. Negotiating Care Between Silences, (In)visibility, and Disobedience

   • Mara Pieri

   Pages 85-108

7. Precarious Lives. Navigating Through Work, Public Spaces, and Activism

   • Mara Pieri

   Pages 109-135

8. The Emergence of the Chroniqueers

   • Mara Pieri

   Pages 137-150

9. Back Matter

   Pages 151-154

   PDF

Drawing on theory and empirical research, this book provides an analysis of the intersections between LGBTQ+ identification and chronic illness. Chapters focus on the theoretical meaning of chronic illness as a queer notion, as well as the lived experiences of chronically ill LGBTQ+ people. The author analyzes chronic illness as an experience that interrogates the normative notions of time, (in)visibility, and disability. Interweaving notions of heteronormativity and able-bodiedness as interwoven and mutually dependent, this book argues that the experience of chronic illness through LGBTQ+ embodiment presents the potential to imagine bodies differently.

This book will be useful for scholars and students in Disability Studies, Queer Studies, and Gender Studies.

• disability
• able-bodied
• queer crip
• heteronormative
• visibility

“Mari Pieri successfully delivers an informative and humanising tone throughout the entire work. … In all, Mari Pieri successfully compiles shared experience across different countries and gives a much needed platform for LGBTQ+ people with chronic illness to be heard. She both manages to give cultural context and present similarities in voices across different backgrounds to challenge stereotypes and misconceptions that remain pervasive across Western society today.” (Sophie Litherland, Inclusive Research Collective, inclusiverc.com, January 31, 2023) “This book is a vital addition to the burgeoning research literature on LGBTQ+ people and disability, and to sexuality and gender identity studies more broadly. It presents the first sociological study of its kind to examine chronic illnesses that LGBTQ+ people live with and make sense of in their lives. Beautifully written, accessible and thoroughly engaging, this book invites us all to recognize that disabling chronic illnesses can often be invisible to us as gender and sexuality, too, can, or highlighted as too visible when compared to a hetero- and gender-normative world built upon productive time. This book asks us to consider who is deemed productive and non-productive and how this impacts our sense of LGBTQ+ people with chronic illnesses who may (have to) do time differently. The book is brimming with innovative theories and methods and some truly insightful findings.” (Zowie Davy, Associate Professor in LGBTQI Research at De Montfort University, UK)

• Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal

  Mara Pieri

Mara Pieri is a researcher at the Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra, Portugal, and holds a PhD in 'Human Rights in Contemporary Societies.' She works on critical disabilities studies and queer studies, and her research interests include supercrips; medicalisation; chronic illness and invisible disabilities; accessibility; sexualities in Southern Europe; and LGBTQ+ health.