Disability, imagination and sexual citizenship

The paper describes and evaluates an initiative recently promoted through the web in Italy: a signatures gathering campaign for formal recognition of professionally trained sexual assistants to disabled people a job that already has proper legal status in several Western countries. I analyze the pros and cons of this kind of answer to the sexual difficulties, and needs, of disabled people, and then move on to the more general issue of disability and what has come to be known as "sexual citizenship". The contemporary theoretical alliance between critical disability studies, feminist studies, queer theory, critical race theory and postcolonial theory, suggests for us the need for a global cultural revolution: it is necessary, first of all, to understand, and then try to correct, the various, and often unconscious images, associations, and feelings that oppress some groups in our societies. A radical change in view is suggested not just about the image of disabled people, but also for gay men and lesbians, women, people of colour, migrant people, sexual workers, and old people.