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Cripping Masculinities

Cripping Masculinities explores how disabled self-identified men and masculine-identified people experience and enact masculinities through fashion. Our work aims to crip (desire the way that disability disrupts) dominant narratives about disability and masculinity by amplifying the experiences of people at the margins of both categories.

  • Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Insight Grant
  • Ben Barry
  • Eliza Chandler
  • Kathryn Church 
  • Michel Ghanem 
  • Kristina McMullin 
  • Megan Strickfaden 
  • Malcolm Stielow

2019-2023

Our research uses a qualitative arts-based methodology through three cumulative
phases and occurs in two cities, Toronto and Edmonton.

  • In Phase 1, we conduct wardrobe interviews with disabled men and masculine-identified people's across a range of mind-body differences and ethnic, sexual and other social identities.
  • In Phase 2, participants from these interviews take part in workshops during which they deconstruct recreate clothing to generate new understandings of masculinity and Disability.
  • In Phase 3, we develop fashion shows to share results from the wardrobe interviews and workshops with non-academic audiences.

The outputs will benefit Canadian society by sharing the experiences of disabled men and masculine-identified people in an effort to transform stereotypes about masculinity and disability. Knowledge from this project is important because we dress our bodies in and for the social world. The ways that we choose to, or are able to dress, impact how we express our identities and value the identities of others. Providing disabled people with access, authorship and representation in fashion fosters their social recognition and desirability.