Fitting comfortably together: Doing and imagining gender and sexuality in personal assistance

This article reports a UK study in which 12 young disabled adults took part in in-depth qualitative interviews that explored how gender and sexuality mattered for their personal assistance. We draw on queer, trans, and disabled feminist research and theory to discuss the ways that genders and sexualities are part of the decisions that young disabled adults make when arranging and managing their personal support, from drafting support plans and recruitment adverts to working out how to share personal space and display the body. We discuss how gender and sexuality are part of the interactions that young disabled adults imagine as necessary for them and their personal assistants (PAs) to be able to work together. The article also offers a creative approach to representing the data. Composed from young disabled adults’ words following a grounded theory analysis of the data, vignettes were developed to respond to ethical challenges of representing the stories of disabled queer, trans, and nonbinary young people. The article ends by discussing the ethical work of enabling gendered and sexual lives through personal assistance. The project was funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) School for Social Care.